Hard Drive Light stays on

Hi There Rich.b

This post may just be what you are looking for, it helped me solve CPU issues.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Troubleshooting/HighCPU

What is the output of:

sudo lshw -C display; lsb_release -a; uname -a; free -m

Thanks

If you use the 2D session is it better?

Thanks to Mark and Andrew for help:-

Mark I have had a look at your link but not yet acted on that.

Andrew, Should I give the output to "sudo lshw -C display; lsb_release -a; uname -a; free -m" when the problem is there?

And what is 2D ? do you mean not in 3D mode. As far as I know I only use 2D not 3D graphics.

Andrew the Hard Light was on all the time while I was typing the entry above so I ran "sudo lshw -C display; lsb_release -a; uname -a; free -m" and the o/p was as follows:-

richard@richard-desktop:~$ sudo lshw -C display; lsb_release -a; uname -a; free -m
[sudo] password for richard:
  *-display UNCLAIMED
       description: Display controller
       product: 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE Chipset Integrated Graphics Device
       vendor: Intel Corporation
       physical id: 2
       bus info: pci@0000:00:02.0
       version: 01
       width: 32 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm bus_master cap_list
       configuration: latency=0
       resources: memory:d0000000-d7ffffff memory:feb80000-febfffff
  *-display
       description: VGA compatible controller
       product: NV44A [GeForce 6200]
       vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
       physical id: 4
       bus info: pci@0000:01:04.0
       version: a1
       width: 32 bits
       clock: 66MHz
       capabilities: pm vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
       configuration: driver=nvidia latency=248 maxlatency=1 mingnt=5
       resources: irq:16 memory:fc000000-fcffffff memory:e0000000-efffffff memory:fd000000-fdffffff memory:fea00000-fea1ffff
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 12.04.5 LTS
Release: 12.04
Codename: precise
Linux richard-desktop 3.2.0-69-generic #103-Ubuntu SMP Tue Sep 2 05:03:16 UTC 2014 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
             total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 992 862 130 0 188 92
-/+ buffers/cache: 581 411
Swap: 1427 196 1230
richard@richard-desktop:~$

Your system only has 1Gb RAM, this is not a lot and the drive light is probably the swap space being used as you fill your RAM. YOu will find that RAM is super cheap and will make the system a lot more responsive. You have the bare minimum RAM amount for Ubuntu. If and when you do add RAM, you will need to increase swap space if you intend to use hibernate and suspend etc.

If you log off the system and click the Ubuntu logo near your username, you can select "Ubuntu 2D" which is lighter on resources as it doesn't use Compiz. This may help but your system will benefit greatly from additional RAM.

I have double the Ram to 2GB and PC is better.

How do I increase swap space on the HD

You will need to boot to Ubuntu liveCD and use Gparted. Be sure you have any important data backed up in case of catastrophe

Ok thanks.