Zorin OS 12 Ultimate 64-bit OS Crashes

OK, I have had a few serious crashes now with the OS that I need to address. The odd thing about these crashes, is no error dialog ever popped up about them. OK, so the first time the OS made a major crash that couldn't be recovered without force shutting the system down with the power button, is when I was logging into the OS. One time I went to login and then the screen went black but showed my curser, I was able to move the curser, but nothing else happened. Then the screen flashed to a blue background with the white dots, then I saw the OS partially loaded the panel at the bottom but nothing else, then my curser stopped moving.

The second time happened just now. I had been using my OS the whole day, everything was going fine with firefox. I went to load up chromium, and it wouldn't load, had a black background and a dialog eventually popped up but couldn't see anythign in it, as it was all black. Then I force closed it and tried to open it up again to no avail. I decided that I probably should do a restart. I went to issue a restart and nothing happened. I then tried to log out but nothing happened. I tried to do CTR Alt Del, nothing happened. I hit the power button quickly once, nothing happened. I tried to redo the restart and log out, nothing happened.

So the OS crashed again, this time after being on a while, where as it didn't do that before that I can recall. So I had to force shutoff again via the power button in order to get the system restarted. Not sure what is causing this, I am guessing just bugs in a new OS who knows. All I know is, it really p***** me off, I don't like having the stress of having to force shutoff my notebook, its not a fun experience for me. Cause I grew up with MAC and Windows, and I learned that if you do that too many times, you can corrupt the OS.

[Edited by Moderator 25.11.2016 - please refrain from expletives as youngsters DO visit this forum. Thanks.]

Have you installed all updates after installation? I suspect Chrome may have caused the issue - that is why Zorin only provide packages they know are going to be stable at time of release - install something else not tested and you could be asking for trouble.

did you install the proprietary driver of your graphic card ? (in updates parameters)
if it works tell us

Yes, I contacted Zorin who gave me exact instructions on installing the Nvidia 304 driver. The weird thing however is that while I was running hte 304 driver on my system, as it showed in the additional drivers list, I got the feeling that the computer was still not using the full performance of my adapter. I remember back when I had Windows, you could enter the Nvidia graphics settings interface and tell Windows to only use high performance Nvidia processor. But in Linux, when I entered the X server settings interface, there was no option to choose which adapter to default to.

So I did a little research and learned about this program called Prime, which supposedly is a component of Nvidia that is needed in order for those settings to show up in the X server settings interface. Well like an idiot, I go on beleiving what I was reading, especially since someone shared a picture showing proof of what they say, I installed prime via the terminal, big mistake. Upon next restart, the desktop interface got all screwed up, couldn't login.

Had to exit the GUI then re-enter it, and then I was able to login it. I tried to remove prime in the terminal but it had no effect. It actually changed the desktop login interface, added something new to the login menu called Kodi, and then I also saw Zorin lightdm. All I know is it screwed everything up. So I tried uninstalling nvidia drivers as well as prime, I tried removing kodi as well. Nothing I did returned things back to normal. Its kind of Sad that Zorin doesn't have a undo option when it comes to junk like this.

Cause guess what I am forced to do now? Thats right, reloading my backup image of the drive again. And then I will have to reinstall K3B and Hard Info. At this point I am done screwing around trying to get things to work perfectly, everytime I try, I brick my OS in some way or the other. I will follow directions i email once again to reinstall the 304 Nvidia driver and then thats it, I am done. I really don't think Linux is utilizing the full performance, because if it did, Brutal Doom would run glass smooth. It doesn't take much resources for a quad core computer runing a Gforce 640M graphics processor to run Doom, dude it will run Alien isolation a modern high intensive FPS game on high graphics, same goes for Fallout 4.

All of this just adds more experience and learning lessons for me as I am still new to Linux. What I can tell you is that Zorin most certainly is a user friendly OS. However, its not fool proof, and if you try to do anything that is a little too special to the OS, be prepared for a possible crudstorm. Ugg.

Star Treker,
I just found your post.
Having many issues with Nvidia drivers in Zorin 12, I tried everything I could find, read, get from Zorin techies, etc. I even reisnstalled and also went from Ultimate to Core in hopes that the Nividia solution offered would work.
Like you, I am new to this and need help figuring out how to keep my Zorin 12 running without crashes. Like you, I like this OS.
Have you found an answer yet? If so, please share.
Thanks.

Having had crashes of OS 12, I thought that this advice needed spreading (from Zorin 12 Ultimate Support):

"If Zorin OS freezes and you can't move the mouse please try pressing Alt+F2 and then type r in the dialog and press Enter. This will restart the shell."

Finston Pickle wrote:Having had crashes of OS 12, I thought that this advice needed spreading (from Zorin 12 Ultimate Support):

"If Zorin OS freezes and you can't move the mouse please try pressing Alt+F2 and then type r in the dialog and press Enter. This will restart the shell."

Thanks for sharing - based on your input I did a search and found a litany of such advice which means Gnome Shell appears to suck big time - isn't it interesting how Distros release betas but DE's don't appear to? Correct me if I am wrong - I can take it!

Interesting ArchLinux Wiki on the subject and what to do if the command you quoted DOESN'T work!

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GN ... leshooting