Computer stalls

[John D Lamb]

On 08/07/14 15:48, rh wrote:
> I have two problems with my Ubuntu box.
> Fist one is, that sometimes there are continued disk ascesses for a long
> time (this may take ten or twenty minutes) whilst the computer is almost
> dead. I have tried to look with "top" if there are any processes which
> takes an unusual amount of time, buit i could not find anything.

> The second thing is that often there are very large Java scrips working
> in Firefox which paralyze the computer. Once I tried to download such a
> script. It was a huge unformated JS-file, unpossible to read or
> understand what it does.
>
> Has anyone an idea how I can find the cause of these Problems?

One possibility is a failing hard drive. I would try

http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/hardy/man8/badblocks.8.html

and

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Smartmontools

to check that there is nothing wrong with the hard drive before 
investigating anything else. The long disk accesses with no obvious 
process problems are consistent with repeated failures to read disk 
information.

If the hard drive is failing it may be possible to sort out most 
problems but you will need to replace the disk sooner rather than later.

-- 
John D Lamb