[NCLUG] Ubuntu Video Issues

[Myles Bostwick]

Hi All! Long time lurker, first time poster here.

I'm running Ubuntu 9.10 though I had this problem with Hardy as well.
After a varied amount of time, my video memory gets corrupted. The
background, windows and window edges are all colored lines. If I
minimize, then restore a window, the window redraws, but the border is
still color bars. However, if I then maximize the window, the border
redraws as well, but sometimes that causes another window to go all
color bars.

Some Information:
- I'm running the Nvidia Proprietary driver version 185 [Recommended]
- Gnome version 2.28.1
- Compiz 0.8.4 (if not enabled, the problem seems to go away, though
may just take longer to happen)
- My video card is an nvidia Quardro FX 550 rev a2

I can attach a screen shot/Xconfig if it's helpful, but I didn't want
to blast the list with it right away.

Another, possibly unrelated symptom is that lots of harddrive access
seems to slow the system down a lot. Ie, I'm doing a large svn
checkout and all my apps freeze and then come back regularly.

Thanks in advance for any help.

-Myles