I am new to Ubuntu. I just installed a fresh copy of 16.04 LTS on a Lenovo M8 3306 ThinkCentre desktop.

It is running great so far other than one weird problem in which I cannot find anyone else on google as having...

Whenever I click on anything to do with system settings, the screen goes black for ~10-60 seconds. Clicking the following things causes this weird problem:

"System Settings" icon in the menu bar

"System Settings" menu item in the top right power dropdown

"About This Computer" menu item in the top right power dropdown

"Change Desktop background" in the right-click on desktop dropdown

When the screen comes back on, the thing that I clicked will be open.

I have tried opening and closing various other programs and folders, but nothing else causes the screen to go black. It seems just anything that is somehow tied to system settings...

One more note: When I first turn on the machine and log in, when it gets to the desktop, it flickers, showing the desktop being a really small square and being the normal size, very rapidly. This stops after a few seconds.

Thanks for your help.

Here is some info:

Computer Processor 4x Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3470 CPU @ 3.20GHz Memory 12106MB (1564MB used) Operating System Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS Display Resolution 1920x1080 pixels OpenGL Renderer Mesa DRI Intel(R) Ivybridge Desktop X11 Vendor The X.Org Foundation (Using VGA) Version Kernel Linux 4.8.0-36-generic (x86_64) Compiled #36~16.04.1-Ubuntu SMP Sun Feb 5 09:39:57 UTC 2017 C Library Unknown Default C Compiler GNU C Compiler version 5.4.0 20160609 (Ubuntu 5.4.0-6ubuntu1~16.04.4) Distribution Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS Loaded Modules intel_rapl Driver for Intel RAPL (Running Average Power Limit) x86_pkg_temp_thermal X86 PKG TEMP Thermal Driver coretemp Intel Core temperature monitor kvm snd_hda_codec_hdmi HDMI HD-audio codec irqbypass IRQ bypass manager utility module snd_hda_codec_realtek Realtek HD-audio codec snd_hda_codec_generic Generic HD-audio codec parser snd_hda_intel Intel HDA driver snd_hda_codec HDA codec core crct10dif_pclmul T10 DIF CRC calculation accelerated with PCLMULQDQ. crc32_pclmul ghash_clmulni_intel GHASH Message Digest Algorithm, acclerated by PCLMULQDQ-NI snd_hda_core HD-audio bus snd_hwdep Hardware dependent layer aesni_intel Rijndael (AES) Cipher Algorithm, Intel AES-NI instructions optimized snd_pcm Midlevel PCM code for ALSA. snd_seq_midi Advanced Linux Sound Architecture sequencer MIDI synth. snd_seq_midi_event MIDI byte sequencer event coder snd_rawmidi Midlevel RawMidi code for ALSA. input_leds Input -> LEDs Bridge aes_x86_64 Rijndael (AES) Cipher Algorithm, asm optimized snd_seq Advanced Linux Sound Architecture sequencer. snd_seq_device ALSA sequencer device management snd_timer ALSA timer interface lrw LRW block cipher mode glue_helper ablk_helper snd Advanced Linux Sound Architecture driver for soundcards. soundcore Core sound module cryptd Software async crypto daemon intel_cstate intel_rapl_perf serio_raw Raw serio driver ie31200_edac MC support for Intel Processor E31200 memory hub controllers lpc_ich LPC interface for Intel ICH mei_me Intel(R) Management Engine Interface mei Intel(R) Management Engine Interface edac_core Core library routines for EDAC reporting mac_hid parport_pc PC-style parallel port driver ppdev lp parport autofs4 hid_generic HID generic driver usbhid USB HID core driver hid i915 Intel Graphics i2c_algo_bit I2C-Bus bit-banging algorithm drm_kms_helper DRM KMS helper syscopyarea Generic copyarea (sys-to-sys) sysfillrect Generic fill rectangle (sys-to-sys) psmouse PS/2 mouse driver sysimgblt 1-bit/8-bit to 1-32 bit color expansion (sys-to-sys) e1000e Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Driver fb_sys_fops Generic file read (fb in system RAM) ahci AHCI SATA low-level driver drm DRM shared core routines libahci Common AHCI SATA low-level routines ptp PTP clocks support pps_core LinuxPPS support (RFC 2783) - ver. 5.3.6 wmi ACPI-WMI Mapping Driver fjes FUJITSU Extended Socket Network Device Driver video ACPI Video Driver OpenGL Vendor Intel Open Source Technology Center Renderer Mesa DRI Intel(R) Ivybridge Desktop Version 3.0 Mesa 12.0.6 Direct Rendering Yes