this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2026
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Hey everyone,

I'm running into a frustrating issue and could use some guidance on how to pinpoint the faulty component.

My system completely locks up every few hours. It's not just a DE crash; the entire machine becomes unresponsive. The mouse and keyboard are completely dead (no cursor movement, Caps Lock key doesn't toggle). I've tried waiting 10-15 minutes to see if it recovers, but it never does.

REISUB does not work. Holding Alt + SysRq and pressing the keys in order does nothing. The only way out is a hard reset using the case button.

The last time this happened, I ended up buying components for a new computer and replaced them one by one until I found the faulty one. I'd rather try a more targeted approach this time. Though if it takes too much effort, I do have another computer I can fall back on.

Any advice on how to diagnose this efficiently? Logs to check, stress tests to run, or hardware to suspect first?

Thanks in advance!

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[–] isgleas@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 hours ago

I sugest you to install/enable sysstat if you have not done that already, and with those metrics you will have some great starting point about what resources may be the culprit next time it happens. It will help you pinpoint if there is a hardware related issue.

Do you have kdump enabled? If so, you can try to force a coredump when the system freezes, so you can uater analyze what the issue is. It is harder to follow this path, as you may need analyzing such dump, but it will help you identify issues not only on the hardware side, but on the software side as well.

Both tools are our bread and butter for RCAs/postmortems