Mysterious X crashes with USB named as possible culprit

[rick_write_taiwan]

I've installed Knoppix 3.4 to HD -- it was the only one I had available, and my previous machine wasn't stable enough to download 3.7.

I'm noticing that the system will seem fine, but at unpredictable times it will crash X Windows and revert to a login prompt. However, before I can log back in, some messages mentioning USB quickly scroll by and the machine won't let me pause and write them down.

Incidentally, while the motherboard has USB, it's not in use -- nothing is connected to USB.

At that point I usually power down. If I just use the reboot button on the front of the case I always get a kernel panic, but if I power down for several seconds, I can reboot.

I have searched these forums but I haven't found an answer yet. Perhaps I will need to wait until it happens again and then write down the USB error message very quickly.

Thanks.

[eon]

The messages your seeing might be in /var/log/user.log or elsewhere in the /var/log files.

Most if not all the stuff you see in a console is written somewhere.

You can also do "dmesg" at a console but that doesn't always provide all the start up or error messages.