| Description | Examples |
| Laptops with the ATI Radeon Mobility Graphics Chipset | IBM Thinkpad A30/A31 (the lastest driver version is 6114 and it has this problem) |
| Desktops with ATI Radeon 7500 through 9000. | Occurs less frequently on faster machines. |
Here is a description of the visible problem:
|
When the computer experiences the problem, the computer will lockup with
the mouse cursor still operating for a short time. Within 30 seconds, the
mouse will stop working, and sometimes a short beep will be heard. The computer
will be completely frozen, and will require a hard reset or poweroff.
Spontaneous reboots have also been seen as possibly related to this problem. |
Here is a description of known ways to reproduce the problem:
|
With Sun's Java Virtual Machine (JVM) versions 1.4.1_01 and 1.4.1_02, starting
a Java application which moves around images will sometimes cause the problem to occur.
Usually, closing any Java application with a UI will cause the problem to occur.
See: bug 4713003 | bug 4756720
The new PC game Lord of the Rings also causes the problem. The problem may also appear seemingly at random when performing graphics operations, although this does not appear to be common. |
The current theory about what causes this problem:
| The JVM version 1.4.1 contains new view acceleration speedups which make use of DirectX. Unlike most DirectX applications, the JVM creates many DirectDraw Device objects. While this is completely acceptable according to DirectX documentation, it is not a very common way to operate, and thus it seems to cause a seldom exercized bug in the ATI Raedon driver. |
The following workarounds are known:
|
Upgrade to Java 1.4.2 (now in Beta).
Set the Java command-line flag -Dsun.java2d.noddraw=true to disable these direct draw optimizations in Java 1.4.1. Switch back to JVM version 1.4.0 which does not have the DirectDraw optimizations which trigger this problem in the ATI driver. This is a pretty undesirable solution, as many bugs were fixed in 1.4.1 and simple things like TreeTable fail to work in 1.4.0. Be sure to use Java Web Start v1.0.1. Web Start v1.2 is only installed with JRE 1.4.1. Goto "Display properties -> Settings -> Advanced -> Troubleshoot" and drag the Acceleration slider all the way to the left to turn off hardware acceleration. (this will reduce but not eliminate the lockups) (Contributed by Nebojsa Vasiljevic) |