Chromebook crashing, help needed please.
Chromebook crashing, help needed please.
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So

Original Poster:

28,176 posts

252 months

Friday 19th June 2020
quotequote all

My son's Lenovo Chromebook.

It seems to crash randomly and his desktop icons vanish. I've never managed to see it before, but it's on my desk now with no desktop icons.

Help appreciated.

AJB88

15,926 posts

201 months

Friday 19th June 2020
quotequote all
Chance its running out of Ram, what model is it? what ram has it got?

Open Chrosh (ctrl + alt + t) if you can then type top, it will open a task manager style window and should be able to see how much memory is being used from there, or instead of typing top, type memory_test.

If it is running out of memory you can set it to use the SSD as ram as well if needed (works well if you cant think extra ram).

Other than that, beauty of ChromeOS, send everything to the cloud and do a powerwash.


Stella Tortoise

3,162 posts

173 months

Friday 19th June 2020
quotequote all
AJB88 said:
Chance its running out of Ram, what model is it? what ram has it got?

Open Chrosh (ctrl + alt + t) if you can then type top, it will open a task manager style window and should be able to see how much memory is being used from there, or instead of typing top, type memory_test.

If it is running out of memory you can set it to use the SSD as ram as well if needed (works well if you cant think extra ram).

Other than that, beauty of ChromeOS, send everything to the cloud and do a powerwash.
I have a chromebook and wish I knew what any of that means.

AJB88

15,926 posts

201 months

Friday 19th June 2020
quotequote all
Stella Tortoise said:
I have a chromebook and wish I knew what any of that means.
Chrosh is the ChromeOS/ChromiumOS version of MS Dos basically, or terminal you get in Linux.

TOP/HTOP is a program that runs in it that shows whats running,memory etc (see screenshot below off my current Ubuntu machine)


There is a process ID next to everything, you can type Kill 666 in the terminal and it will kill process 666, so if you have a program that wont close it will when you kill it.

Powerwash is just a "clean install"

So

Original Poster:

28,176 posts

252 months

Friday 19th June 2020
quotequote all

I cannot think it's running out of RAM, it's got very little on it and it's newish.

AJB88

15,926 posts

201 months

Friday 19th June 2020
quotequote all
Might be worth getting him to replicate what hes doing when it crashes and then doing it again but before it crashes seeing how much memory its using, that would rule that out.

If that isn't it do a Powerwash, literally takes 15 minutes, not like wiping Windows/MacOS/Linux.

So

Original Poster:

28,176 posts

252 months

Friday 19th June 2020
quotequote all
AJB88 said:
Might be worth getting him to replicate what hes doing when it crashes and then doing it again but before it crashes seeing how much memory its using, that would rule that out.

If that isn't it do a Powerwash, literally takes 15 minutes, not like wiping Windows/MacOS/Linux.
Thanks for your help. I will try to monitor him when he next uses it.

AJB88

15,926 posts

201 months

Friday 19th June 2020
quotequote all
Just ask him to load the usual things up to try replicate it.