Gnome 3.4 Freezing / Lockup

["Adam Sailer" <ASailer uwb edu>]

I'm having a problem with Gnome 3.2.1 freezing, on average once a day. I have
been unable to figure out why or how to reproduce the problem in a
predictable manner. It just happens when I'm interacting with the computer;
Sometimes when I launch an application, sometimes when I'm in 'Activities'
view... no apparent common denominator.

When this happens, the Gnome desktop just freezes, with the exception of the
mouse pointer - I can move it around. I can Ctrl-Alt-F1, login to a terminal,
and see that my processes are still running. When I Ctrl-Alt-F7 back to my
graphical desktop, it is completely black with the mouse pointer still
moveable. If I'm running my VM [W7 as a VMware Player 4.0.4 guest], I can RDP
to it from another computer and see that it is running fine. I can SSH to the
host machine, and my SMB shares are working fine.
 have to remote in to properly shut down the VM, and then either 'init 3 /
init 5', Ctrl-Alt-Backspace, or just issue a reboot command. I don't see
anything obvious in /var/log/messages.

System:

openSUSE 12.1 x64
Gnome 3.2
3.1.10-1.13-desktop #1 SMP PREEMPT Tue Jun 12 13:11:31 UTC 2012 (44a489e)
x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux nVidia GeForce GT240, driver ver 295.59 x64
(nouveau driver does not work at all) Intel MB, Intel Core i5 CPU 661 @ 3.33
GHz x 4, 4.0 GB DDR3. I can provide more specific info if needed)

This has happened for quite some time, through various kernel and nVidia
driver versions. Any ideas on how I might resolve this issue? What log(s)
should I be looking at?

Thank you,

AdamS.