Is 10.3 i386 jinxed ?

[Manish Jain]

On 05/01/16 00:04, Polytropon wrote:
> On Sat, 30 Apr 2016 23:43:47 +0530, Manish Jain wrote:
>> I reinstalled the whole system using xfce as the desktop. While things
>> have improved, the system is still not workable.
>>
>> 1) The installer 'forgot' to place the boot code on the MBR. I had to
>> use live CD + boot0cfg to fix that.
> Use MBR only if needed. Today's preference is to use GPT for
> partitioning. Compare:
>
> http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/disksetup.html
>
> Use MBR only if you have a valid reason as it probably has
> reached the state of "not supported anymore".
>
>
>
>> 2) The first time X started, xfce4-panel crashed
>> 3) The second time, xfce-terminal crashed
>> 4) The third time, trying to launch firefox rebooted the system.
> This (and especially the last problem) leads to the impression
> that there is a _massive_ problem, it's probably not related to
> the FreeBSD OS, and surely not to installed applications. Are
> you sure there isn't a hardware problem lurking in the background?
> Like... starting a web browser reboots the system... this simply
> sounds totally wrong.
>
>
>
>> Overall, 10.3 i386 seems to have gremlins in the belly. What do I do ?
> I have a 10.2 installation on an older Dell laptop, running Gnome 2,
> no problems so far (but I haven't tried updating it yet, as I'm a
> big fan of "never touch a running system", a symptom of lazyness
> and "fat fingers"). :-)
>
>
>
>> Try some linux distro ? This is exactly what I have been trying to avoid.
> Check out PC-BSD or try the Lxde desktop. Maybe you can also
> settle for a less convoluted desktop, i.e. a window manager
> that you like.
>
>
>
>> BTW, does anyone have any idea where can I get Windows XP drivers for
>> the NE56R laptop ?
> >From the manufacturer of course. :-)
>
>
>
>> If nothing else works, XP remains my fall-back option.
> For offline use that's probably more or less okay. :-)
>
>

I strongly suspect some hardware problem, quite possible RAM : there is 
a page fault at boot time and the report is in /var/crash. I am running 
memtest86+ for 24 hours, and will report results tomorrow. If memtest86+ 
detects no errors, I will paste the contents of the crash report for 
some expert to analyse.

Regards
Manish Jain