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I recently installed Ubuntu 12.04 on an old Sony laptop and I've had a problem I've never seen before. The side bar menu text, the dropdown menu text and sometimes the background image weren't rendering properly. After a system update it got a little better, but still after using the computer for a few days the problem comes back. Here is a screenshot of how it looks like:

The problem persists also when I use Gnome or Unity2D. I don't know if it is a driver issue or a hardware problem or what it is. Has someone else seen this problem and knows what causes it and hopefully how to fix it?

More info:

lspci -nnk | grep -iA2 VGA 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:2a42] (rev 07)
Subsystem: Sony Corporation Device [104d:9035] 
Kernel driver in use: i915
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  • you should better substitute your output with lspci -nnk | grep -iA2 VGA and make sure you're using right drivers askubuntu.com/questions/47506/…
    – JoKeR
    Feb 28, 2015 at 18:43
  • :~$ lspci -nnk | grep -iA2 VGA 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:2a42] (rev 07) Subsystem: Sony Corporation Device [104d:9035] Kernel driver in use: i915
    – Physico
    Feb 28, 2015 at 18:52
  • When I go to "additional drivers", I get "No proprietary drivers are in use on this system."
    – Physico
    Feb 28, 2015 at 19:06
  • Nothing, nothing from nvidia installed here. What specs do you need?
    – Physico
    Feb 28, 2015 at 19:24

1 Answer 1

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as intel graphics driver is a part of Xorg, I believe the best solution here be:

check if rendering is yes with command:

glxinfo | grep render

for this you need mesa-utils

sudo apt-get install mesa-utils

you should get something like this:

direct rendering: Yes
OpenGL renderer string: GeForce XXXX PCIe/SSE2
GL_KTX_buffer_region, GL_NVX_conditional_render, 
GL_OES_fbo_render_mipmap, GL_OES_get_program_binary, GL_OES_mapbuffer,

the last, you can try to reinstall graphics driver:

sudo apt-get install --reinstall xserver-xorg-video-intel

then reboot X

sudo service lightdm restart

or

sudo /etc/init.d/lightdm restart

if it still doesn't work maybe you should file this as a bug.

apport-bug xorg
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  • mesa-utils is already installed. Here is the output: direct rendering: Yes OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Mobile Intel® GM45 Express Chipset x86/MMX/SSE2 GL_EXT_vertex_array_bgra, GL_NV_conditional_render
    – Physico
    Mar 1, 2015 at 0:53
  • The system crashed during restart. As of now there is no rendering problem, but like I said, it usually comes back after a few days of use.
    – Physico
    Mar 1, 2015 at 1:03
  • it might crash due to new kernel update so you have to repeat the actions in my answer, it's unpleasant but it might be fixed yet by Ubuntu or Xorg developers. For now file this as a bug you'll get a response letter from Launchpad on your email. As this answer acceptable for you now don't forget to mark it as solved so it won't stay opened. You can change your opinion later if somebody will come with some better conclusion.
    – JoKeR
    Mar 1, 2015 at 10:46
  • I'll do that. Thank you very much for the help.
    – Physico
    Mar 1, 2015 at 21:09

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