Comment 16 for bug 599626

Bonne, try to be very explicit in your comments. When you say in comment #15 "but it gives exactly the same results" I interpret that as "same results as with the current Ubuntu kernel", not "same result as the LiveCD". I hope that is correct.

There have been cases before where a problem does not occur when using a LiveCD simply because it is slower. This happens when one task does not have the time to complete before another task tries to use the result. I am not sure if this is such a problem. You may try a fresh install from the LiveCD without upgrading to check.

There have been similar problems with some Sony Vaio laptops before, but if I remember correctly those computers froze instantly when an external monitor was connected, even if xorg was not running. Since you need to run `xrandr -q` (which is essentially what starting gnome-display-properties does) to trigger the freeze, this is more xorg related.

Nevertheless, the xrandr call triggers the kernel to talk to the monitor and this is probably what causes the freeze. Since this isn't a GPU hang but some other kernel failure, I will move this bug to the kernel where triagers know better how to extract information form various kernel error conditions.