system crashes when totem plays a file

I see the exact same behavior when playing a video file or a sound file using totem. Totem starts, but after a second it locks up everything. With sound files, you usually get about a half second of music before the crash, but with video you typically don't get any output at all.

I've had consistant success in saving the system just by mashing ctrl+alt+backspace after the freeze takes place. It may take a few minutes, but eventually X does go down, taking all its apps with it. Not much of a solution, but it at least avoids having to reboot.

I have the exact same setup as Tim does. I have a Dell D620 running Edgy with Totem 2.16.2.

As a revision to my statement before, I've done a little more research and I've further determined the cause of the problem. Totem crashes on my computer if and only if I'm using an external monitor. I suspect the problem is an nvidia driver issue and not an issue with totem.

I use the TwinView feature of the NVidia non-free video driver, and when I'm using the external monitor instead of the laptop's built-in screen, totem crashes when it plays video (or audio with visualization). When I use the built-in screen, everything works fine.

I haven't been able to test using the free nv driver yet, just because getting this external monitor to work with my system at all has been a pain. I can confirm the nv driver works when using the laptop's built-in screen, but, then again, so does the nvidia driver.

As a FURTHER update, switching to the latest beta version of the nvidia driver, 1.0-9742, has cleared up this problem. Video works fine for me again.

For now, the driver can be found at:

http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_downloads_linux_display_x86_1.0-9742.html

That version of the driver has a slight typo bug, but here's a link I found explaining how to patch it manually:

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=79902

I have the same problem here. Whenever I try to play a file in totem (any file) it just crashes and takes my system with it. The only two diferences are: I've never had any playback - even for half a second - either with audio or video files, and my mouse still moves around while everything else is completely frozen.

I am using a macbook (intel, c2d 2.0Ghz), and no restricted drivers enabled, so my problem is not exactly the same here (i.e. not and nVidia driver problem, like wren42 sugested).

Ctrl + Alt + Backspace doesn't seem to work at all (even though I did not wait for a few minutes as mentioned before), and I couldn't try Alt + SysRq + REISUB just because there isn't a SysRq key here.

I can confirm this bug too.

My problem is similar but intermittent. The first two times I tried this the whole system froze. I first recorded something as speex in sound recorder, then saved it and played it, system crash. I then recorded something as ogg, played it back successfully in sound recorder, then saved it at which point it could no longer play back, then tried movie player and syster froze up completely (did not try ctrl-alt-del with wait).

I was able to play something back before I started sound recorder, but now I'm not.

I reproduced this twice then couldn't any more. On intel macs the problem is probably caused by something else than from the original poster.

This is a Feisty kernel. Feisty has reached EOL. If this is still a problem in Jaunty (although this file no longer exists), please reassign to a more appropriate package and update the description as necessary.