Hi, sometimes when i'm listening to my mp3s, surfing the web and using gaim (instant messaging) at the same time, or doing some other stuff simultaneously everything stops, the mouse cursor doesn't move, nothing responds, I even try to press num lock (thats how I know if it really crashes, the num lock light doesnt change even y y press num lock) to see if something responds but nothing happens, so I have to turn off the pc and back on, is this supposed to happen in linux, I understand that this may happen in windows but not in linux, what do I need to do to fix this problem?

press crtl-alt-backspace simultanously to quite the X-windows.

Or just switch to console mode (eg, Ctrl + Alt + F2). The F-keys correspond to different virtual consoles, X normally runs on 7. At the console, you can just kill the process that's hung and return to X (Ctrl + Alt + F7) and continue work (or play) as usual.

yeah, I've been told the same suggestion before but it didn't work. When it happens, nothing works, the mouse pointer doesn't move, there's no hard drive activity, nothing. By the way, some things that I forgot to tell y'all I'm running linux on a: Pentium 1 MMX 166 mhz 40 mb ram 1.50 gb hd winmodem (got a driver for it) Vector Linux 2.0 XFree86 3.3.6 Thanks people

X going Rogue can be a bitch. Stay away from Netscape 4.X and Xfree 3.3.X combo. If Xfree cuts off I/O control, just telnet or rlogin in to your system and: su, "Killall -9 X" , or PS -A | grep X and kill -9 {xxx}. There is some code out there that monitors X and kills it if it goes Rogue. But I dont remenber where it is. as for a real fix,(? I never looked to deep into it, Xfree4 fixed the problem) good luck!