Can you attribute it to anything that you might have changed since it ran
well? You might also want to look at the inside. Perhaps it needs a cleaning
or a memory check.

No nothing at all, except that I did have a crash early this morning and the
only way to recover was to pull the plug and release the battery. It worked
fine again for 4 hours then the freezing and fading started.

I ran the Computer Janitor (or did you mean inside the casing?) a few weeks
ago and got rid of some stuff, memory was a bit low so I moved a bunch of
pdf's and films onto DVD's.

I recently switched off for a while and restarted, no change.

No, it sounds like you have a laptop. Desktop computers can do this when
they get too hot from clogged vents. By memory I meant the memory chips
which can go wonky and cause problems such as re-booting without asking,
freezing etc. The memory in laptops can do this too. It might be worth while
looking at it if it is overheating. You can always add extra fans and
cooling pads. Memory for laptops isn't cheap, especially if it is older. So
I hope that it isn't the case.

Something to look for would also be excessive disk caching which could point
to a memory problem. I have also had something similar happen when I have
had a drive problem. I had a usb drive that was having problems and when I
disconnected it the problem disappeared. The hard drive itself can easily be
checked with a disk utility. You need to rule things out one at a time.


It could also be a software issue, but that would affect more than just you.
If you dual boot then you can see if it is only in Ubuntu or more
widespread. You can even install another distro to a usb key and see if it
happens there. Computer problems are hard to diagnose because they are so
complex.

Maybe a crazy thought, but it almost sounds like something could be
going silly with the notification system. I haven't played with 10.10
outside of a live CD, but it may be worth it to try turning off all
notifications and see if the problem persists...

try XFCE and/or FVWM-Crystal !...

This morning I booted up and found my message to you was gone (strange as my
Gmail acc is set to save every 3 minutes........puter was the same, first a
freeze then the darkening repeated every minute or so. I gave up, left it on
and connected and did some other stuff for an hour or so. When I came back
the freezing and darkening has gone and I'm back to normal.....I don't get
it, pleased but frustrated. I have had glitches before that have healed them
selves but this is amazing.