Display gets corrupted and garbled every 5-7 minutes when using compiz. VT switch which takes ~1min required to reset screen

[Motin]

If I am lucky I can work in about 5-7 minutes before the screen gets all garbled up and I have to switch to and from a tty to get back to a normal appearance, a process that for some reason takes around 1-2 minutes.

Check the attached screenshot for an idea of how it looks...

I have inactivated all compiz plugins but the most basic ones for functionality, like window decorations and desktop switcher.

Bug #269904 seems to be similar, but none of the reporters seem to experience to complete corruption of the screen that I am.
[lspci]
00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 Memory Controller Hub [8086:2a00] (rev 0c)
     Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:0209]
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: nVidia Corporation GeForce 8400M GS [10de:0427] (rev a1)
     Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:0209]

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Hi motin,

Thanks for including an image to demonstrate the issue. Could you also please attach the output of `lspci -vvnn`, and attach your /var/log/Xorg.0.log file from after reproducing this issue. If you've made any customizations to your /etc/X11/xorg.conf please attach that as well.

[This is an automated message. If this script has reached you erroneously, please accept our apologies; any reply to this message will be sufficient to prevent it from doing further automated processing.]

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

[This is an automated message]

In Jaunty (9.04), we are dropping the nvidia-graphics-drivers-177 package, which
is now superseded by then nvidia-graphics-drivers-180 package.

  http://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nvidia-graphics-drivers-180

To transition your bug into the new package, we need your help. Please do the following:

 a. Verify the bug occurs in Jaunty with the -180 driver
     (ISOs: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/jaunty/)
 b. If you haven't already, please include in the bug:
     * Your /var/log/Xorg.0.log
     * Your /etc/X11/xorg.conf
     * The output of `lspci -vvnn`
     * Steps to reproduce the issue
 c. Under Affects, click the down arrow to the left of 'nvidia-graphics-drivers-177'
 d. Edit the Package to change 'nvidia-graphics-drivers-177' to 'nvidia-graphics-drivers-180'
 e. Click Save Changes

Thank you!

[We'll expire the remaining -177 bugs in a month or so.]

[Jonathan Thomas (echidnaman)]

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to "New". Thanks again!

[Alistair Buxton (a-j-buxton)]

Reopening - I've just today started to get a very similar problem using nvidia-graphics-drivers-180 on Jaunty, after installing some updates.

[Alistair Buxton (a-j-buxton)]

Steps to reproduce: none, it randomly happens every 5-10 minutes while using compiz. Cannot reproduce with other (none compositing) WM, nor see any kind of corruption in opengl games. Switching to VT clears the corruption until the next time. Nothing freezes or crashes at any point.

[Alistair Buxton (a-j-buxton)]

Installed versions:

compiz: 1:0.8.2-0ubuntu8.1
nvidia: 180.44-0ubuntu1
kernel: 2.6.28-13-generic

The problem started happening immediately after rebooting for the kernel upgrade.

[Robert Ancell (robert-ancell)]

Closing compiz link as this is a driver issue

[Alistair Buxton (a-j-buxton)]

Closing again. In my case this was probably caused by a hardware failure: the fan on the graphics card had died.