Comment # 44 on bug 1028575 from Mircea Kitsune

Created attachment 729307 [details]
Photo of the corrupt image on the screen

I have discovered some very important details today. Everyone following up on
the report, please see this comment!

Recently I realized that a useful test would be to jump into a different run
level once I notice the crash, in order to see how the system behaves there. A
few minutes ago another freeze took place, so I instantly hit Control + Alt +
F1 to go to a console. What I noticed was pretty remarkable and sheds light on
a few aspects:

I could keep typing in the console for nearly 10 seconds, but after that the
exact same behavior still took place (monitor turned itself on and off two
times then the image froze). This time however I was able to toggle the NumLock
led a minute after the crash, while also seeing the HDD led still working; That
means this is not (always) a total system freeze such as a Kernel panic...
instead it appears to be the image output corrupting and staying that way,
freezing only specific components with it (I was still unable to issue a blind
reboot command for instance). To put everything into an approximate timeline,
this is what happened:

00 seconds in: The crash occurs.
02 seconds in: I notice and instantly hit Control + Alt + F1.
05 seconds in: I'm taken to a console where everything works fine: I see the
blinking cursor, can write my login and password, etc.
12 seconds in: Suddenly the monitor turns off and back on several times, then
the image remains frozen in place.

This time however, the screen did not remain turned off or black. Instead it
stayed stuck in a state showing corrupt lines and rectangles of random colors.
I took a photo of my screen with my smartphone, which I attached to this issue.