clicking on system window weirdness

[azwli]

Hello, I have a very strange problem that has arisen and I hope someone out there can offer assistance.

I just did the latest round of updates but I don't know what all was in there. I know Firefox was one, but there were about a dozen packages that were updated. I am using Kubuntu 14.04 and have updated to the latest kernel.

What I am experiencing is this: I cant click on system window related items, for example I cant close or re-size windows or click in the activity bar to change application windows. I can click within the active applications mostly fine. I say mostly because I can click the dropdown prefix window in this page, but I cant click on an option, I had to use the down arrow and hit enter. If I open the system activity window with ctt+esc I can't click on anything in the window except the search bar and it is like it is transparent clicking on the window beneath it. I can only close it by hitting ctrl+esc again.

If I mess around and right click on things and such, for some reason it will switch and then all I can click on is the system stuff and can't click within the application. But I cant replicate the switch with any consistency. If I restart the machine, everything works ok for a while and then it goes into this behavior again.

I am using a USB mouse and tried my PS2 mouse once with no change. (Unfortunately, I damaged the cord of mu only ps2 mouse right after that so I cannot do further tests right now)

Please help if you can.

[update]
If the activity bar at the bottom is not "active" meaning I can't change to a different application or click the minimize/maximize button, I grab one of the firefox tabs and drag it just a bit and drop it. That makes everything active. Then I click on something in the activity bar and the firefox tabs become "inactive".
I can reverse the effect by clicking on one of the application buttons and dragging it slightly and dropping it.


[Update 2]
This behavior went on all day with out changing no matter what I did. This morning I turned on the computer and the clicking issue hasn't occurred, but now the screen is flashing white. I changed the video driver to the x.org X server driver and it seems to be working. Not sure what I have done, but so far things seem ok. I have turned off desktop effects, but that wasn't helping yesterday.

[update 3]
The flashing went away, but after a restart the click problem is back.

[azwli]

This seems to have been a problem with a USB port or perhaps a bad PS2 port.

[fjuhec]

Hi! Did you solve the problem? Do you have any updates?
I have been experiencing a similar issue and is driving me crazy. I tried downgrading xserver update to no avail, seems to happen less but the issue is still present. In my case,appart from the mouse issues you experienced, I also suffer from unwanted backspace key events that make firefox and dolphin go back in history and also, after the key events the mouse issue appears until I click the right mouse button which somehow makes left button work again for a while.

[azwli]

Well, it was strange because when I changed to different USB ports, the problem went away. So in my case it seems to be a hardware issue.

[fjuhec]

Thanks! I am trying right now if changing the keyborad and mouse USB port fixes it. Was using 2.0 and changed them to unused 3.0 ports.
I am not sure if it is a hardware issue, it was working fine up until Sept. 6th but then I had to stop using the computer for a few weeks until yesterday and noticed the issue after updates (kernel, xserver-xorg-core, udev, dbus-x11)
I have also found some old bug report with similar descriptions to this issue.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...er/+bug/362359
I hope switching ports solves the issue in my system and does not come back.

[jlittle]

I am not sure if it is a hardware issue, it was working fine up until Sept. 6th but then I had to stop using the computer for a few weeks until yesterday...

That sounds a bit like a power supply problem.

[fjuhec]

That sounds a bit like a power supply problem.

Could be. I don't discard a hardware problem, it's possible. It's a 850W power supply connected to a 1200W UPS but even with that I am open to consider all options, might have been an electric surge due to a recent storm and the UPS did not protect the power supply enough. Don't know, I will keep an eye on it.

BTW, when I say I had to stop using the computer for a few weeks I don't mean it was shut down all the time, I used it less than the previous days, briefly every other day but not enough time for the issue to be noticed, a bit of browsing and some email checking but no serious work for hours like I used to. I just started working again full time yesterday when I noticed this issue.