Keyboard and Mouse Freeze up

[SM373]

Hi,

I'm running Kubuntu 10.04 dual booting with windows XP. My problem is that whenever I boot up my system to kubuntu, while using KDE my mouse and keyboard will randomly freeze on me.

It usually happens within 10 minutes of booting into KDE, but sometimes earlier or later.

When the freeze occurs, no keyboard activity is able to be detected. The numlock key doesn't even toggle. The mouse pointer will freeze and is unable to be moved. The only way to get out of this state is to power off the machine.

The machine isn't completely locked up though. If I hit the power button on my machine, the shutdown/logoff screen comes up. The time, or any other process still runs ok as well. I also can ping the machine while it's frozen.

I'm using a regular logitech optical mouse (no usb), and a standard Dell keyboard.

This problem does not occur in Windows.

If you need log files / conf files or any additional information, let me know how to get it and i'll gladly provide it. Thanks.

[dibl]

Re: Keyboard and Mouse Freeze up

First, how to restart when you think it's frozen:

Press Alt and SysRq and hold them down, while pressing R-S-E-I-U-B in slow sequence. Pushing the power button can have destructive effects on the mounted filesystem and cached data.

Second, when you reboot, open a terminal window, or use Alt-F2 and run "top". Put this window in the corner of your screen where you can keep an eye on it. At the point when your keyboard and mouse freeze, it might be very helpful to know which process is sucking up all the resources -- my two cent bet is on xorg.

Also, when you reply, we'll want to see the hardware details on your keyboard and mouse and motherboard (or model of the PC if it is an OEM). If they are USB devices,

lsusb

might be informative. There is also a package named hardinfo (or hwinfo) that you can install that will list the details when you run it.

[SM373]

Re: Keyboard and Mouse Freeze up

Ok thanks. I'll try it when I get home later

Sorry I forgot to mention about the keyboard. It's not a USB device.

Both mouse and keyboard are NOT USB.

[SM373]

Re: Keyboard and Mouse Freeze up

Ok it just froze again after about 20 minutes.

Alt + sys Req - RSEIUB didn't work. I tried about 10 times and nothing happened.

top displayed X acting normal. There was nothing hogging the CPU when it froze. The list continued to be updated but nothing was using an unordinary amount of cpu usage.

Here's some info from hardinfo

Summary
 Computer
 Processor 4x Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz
 Memory 4123MB (918MB used)
 Operating System Ubuntu 10.04 LTS
 User Name sm (SM)
 Date/Time Fri 07 May 2010 12:03:07 AM EDT
 Display
 Resolution 1920x1200 pixels
 OpenGL Renderer Unknown
 X11 Vendor The X.Org Foundation
 Multimedia
 Audio Adapter HDA-Intel - HDA NVidia
 Input Devices
  Power Button
  Power Button
  Macintosh mouse button emulation
  AT Translated Set 2 keyboard
  ImPS/2 Logitech Wheel Mouse
  HDA Digital PCBeep
 Printers
 No printers found
 SCSI Disks
 ATA Hitachi HDP72505
 ATA WDC WD2500KS-00M
 HL-DT-ST DVD-ROM GDR-H30N
 HL-DT-ST DVD-RAM GH22NP20
 Generic STORAGE DEVICE
 Generic STORAGE DEVICE
 Generic STORAGE DEVICE
 Generic STORAGE DEVICE
 Generic STORAGE DEVICE

[dibl]

Re: Keyboard and Mouse Freeze up

Hmmmm -- so the mouse and keyboard are actually being "disconnected", logically, from your computer. That would suggest there is some bug or fault in the driver(s), or some mismatch of the hardware to the driver, or something along those lines. The computer is not actually frozen, I believe -- but your keyboard and mouse might as well be in a different city.

Do you have / can you put your hands on an alternate set of mouse and keyboard? Just for troubleshooting purposes, it would be good to isolate this problem. To do that, you need a different model of mouse and a different model of keyboard (since we don't know which one is causing the problem). I would suggest trying a USB mouse and keyboard if you can find them to borrow. Then I would suggest substituting one at a time, and booting and seeing whether the problem goes away.

That's my suggestion, until you can learn more about the cause of this problem.

[SM373]

Re: Keyboard and Mouse Freeze up

I have an extra usb mouse at work. I'll give that a try this weekend and see how it goes.

Thanks for your help.