Wireless Mouse Locks Up

[logan01]

Purchased 2 Lexar 3.0 / 8GB flash drive from ebay. At the time of purchase (my bad), I didn't realize they had been "repackaged". Each pkg has a sticker saying 8GB. I remove the sticker and the pkg says 2.0. I was wanting 3.0. The sticks said 3.0. I begin researching on how to determine what I have. I discover the first command [lsusb] which lists each usb device. The results show each usb is 64GB, not 8GB. The next command gives me whether they are 2.0, 3.0, etc. In my particular case the command was [lsusb -v -s 2:4] where the 2:4 indicate bus and drive. One of the lines return displayed [bcdUSB 3.00] indicating the drives were 3.0. As I would be doing this for the first usb, my cursor would freeze. The first time this happened, I killed my laptop, rebooted and all was well. I "safely" removed the drive. Repeated process for the second usb and the same happened. This time I removed the usb without using the "you can now safely remove ......". Computer is still powered up. When I did, I get a full (how large I don't know" Konsole display of crap I am clueless as to what it meant. I recall seeing the word "pointer" now and then. I killed the computer and all was well. During this ordeal, some of my research was conducted with a flash drive inserted and I had no issues. I wanted to do a "print screen" of the Konsole display of errors but knew I couldn't do the necessary 2-3 actions required to save the .jpg capture. I'm quite certain the mouse locking up was due to the 2 drives but have no idea why. But as I said, when I listed the drives they showed to be Lexar 3.0 drive though they indicated as 64 GB instead of 8GB as marked on the pkg and device. Any ideas? Toss the two drives?

[Snowhog]

Don't know how much you paid for them; I'm guessing 'not so much'; and if it were me, I'd toss them, or maybe dd them and then reformat. Your call.

[logan01]

Thanks. 13.00 shipped for both. Very cheaply made as well. Off to learn the reformat using dd command.

[logan01]

Is this the correct method to reformat to FAT32 after I confirm the usb as sdb?

Insert usb and unmount using following cmd [umount /dev/sdb] followed by:

[mkfs.vfat /dev/sdb –I]

[Qqmike]

(parenthetical ... if it were me (and it ain't), I would zero it out, then reformat it using GParted (GParted either installed in your Kubuntu or GParted Live CD/USB). Assuming it is sdb, to totally zero it out (write zeros to each and every byte),
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=4k
To reformat it using Gparted, you must first install SOME partitioning scheme: I'd simply choose the old MBR (not the EFI). Then just reformat it as FAT32 in Gparted. /parenthetical) Btw, both dd and GParted will show you what you got: how big it is.

[logan01]

Check this out. In an earlier thread (days ago) you had me run lsblk to ID my usb. Just now I ran that cmd and it was "normal" looking and the size was 7.5G (8GB) as compared to the 64 (and crazy mouse lock up) when I ran lsusb. I think all is well. I recon that cmd I found (lsusb) wierded my pc out with this particular usb.

[Qqmike]

Yeah, weird. GParted will also "see" that USB, and show you what's on it (size, partitions, format, etc.). lsblk, AFAIK, is quite reliable. You can install gparted in Kubuntu using Muon (maybe it is already installed: K > Applications > System > Partition Editor (Gparted)). Or run Gparted on a live CD or USB.

[logan01]

Moments before I ran lsblk, I ran sudo fdisk -l and it resulted in this. Then I ran yours and it looks good to me.

[Qqmike]

Yeah, fdisk shows about 8 GB, too. Not sure what that partition sdb1 is! Who knows. W95 something. In sectors, subtract the Start (starts at sector 10456) from the End (ends at sector 15671295), and multiply by 512 bytes per sector (that info comes from the fdisk output above), and you get about 8 GB again => sdb1 taking up the whole flash drive. I guess it all makes sense. One thing about dd: it will wipe out everything! any junk at the beginning, the middle or the very end, writing zeros to every byte.

[Qqmike]

dd will also, in a sense, refresh the flash drive by writing zeros to every byte and thus activating every byte -- like factory new.

EDIT: dd actually writes to every bit, activating every bit.

[logan01]

Evidently the mouse lockup is a PC lockup. After my reply to you, with the flash drive having been removed for a solid 5 minutes, I was cruising one of my gun forums. Cursor froze. I noticed my wifi light was "on" (i've been running my ethernet). Tried to kill wifi with the wifi key. No response. I next try to turn on my speaker key. No go. WTH?

Does Kubuntu maintain a log of incidents and is there a restore function back to another date / time?

[Qqmike]

Does Kubuntu maintain a log of incidents and is there a restore function back to another date / time?

No restore function, that I know of. Not sure about the best log to check, maybe try
dmesg
?
Someone else might know.
Hope the PC lock up isn't hardware ... like memory?


https://www.google.com/search?client...nel=fs&q=dmesg

[logan01]

No idea. So here I go again jumping through my .... I can never detect the fan running with this laptop, therefore, I'm thinking the machine is frying. I've been aware of no air circulating since I bought this about a year ago. The exhaust is there though warm air is barely detectable. Not moving air; just a warm spot when holding my finger up to the exhaust port. I switched over to Windows over an hour ago looking for a good freebie hardware monitor. Downloaded one and it didn't detect my fan. Temps were acceptable. Downloaded another and I can't find any fan related anything though it should be there. No lockup in last 1 1/2 hours or so. Tomorrow I go back to Kubuntu. If all is well tomorrow for a few hours, those 2 flash drives will likely go in the pond.

EDIT: Posted this around 11:15pm last night. For some reason it didn't go or I didn't send it. But the draft was recoverable.

[GreyGeek]

You can download and install "Thermal Monitor" plasma widget in the panel and set the "warning" and "meltdown" temperatures. It will show the CPU temp in the panel. The update period is adjustable.
When I first installed 16.04 on April 1st I experienced frequent pseudo app crashes. A crash report dialog would appear but the app kept running as if nothing was wrong, and I determined that nothing was really wrong. After a couple updates over the next week or so the crash dialogs stopped appearing. Despite those bogus reports 16.04 has turned out to be as stable as a rock for me, just like 14.04 and 12.04 were. My video chip is an Intel Integrated Hardware device. It shows Stellarium at about 50-60 fps and Minecraft with optifine at about the same. I have the compositor set to openGL 3.1.

[GreyGeek]

The only time my mouse locks up is when its battery goes down, about every 18 months or so.