Periodic loss of mouse and keyboard functions.

Forum: Other Help Topics
Topic: Periodic loss of mouse and keyboard functions.
started by: daklander

Posted by daklander on Dec. 09 2005,18:16

I really need some help with this one.
I've been fighting Wireless and the latests 2.1 RC1 was the first time I've had luck getting it running. I was really jacked up about getting that going and fired up Firefox to post success. LOCK UP! Big time, both mouse and keyboard. No key functions would work so no ctr/alt anything....
I tried a warm boot and got a bunch of errors showing so I did a cold boot and it came back up. Same problem. With the subsequent cold boot I had the corrupt files notices again so I did a re-install. Same problem. That happened several times.
Now I figured I'd try the 2.0 version and actually, for the first time with that got wireless running. (apparently there is a need to have the nidswrapper drivers in /home/dsl and nowhere else....
Anyway, same problems. I also had that same issue with no internet connection, no browsers open & etc but running XMMS to play a CD.
I never noticed an issue with lockups running live though I had no internet running live.

This is an Athlon K6 350 with 196 MB of RAM, a solo 3 gig hard drive partitioned to 2.8 gigs as hda1 and the rest as swap at hda5. There is NO fat partition. I have the Linux and the Linux swap. Grub on MBR. One CDROM and a 3 1/2" floppy. A Soundblaster soundcard and a Matrox Millenium video card are what are in ISA slots, if I remember, and the mouse card is, I think a pci card. I'd have to open the box to check if that makes a difference. The keyboard is the old, large connector, non-PS/2 keyboard.

No problems with the other small distros I've tried.
This particular computer is intended for use in my garage to stream audio in lieu of a radio so I want a distro that is minimal in using resources and I don't really need a spreadsheet, word processor & etc so the small programs in DSL are fine until I learn how to remove them. I would presume via apt-get but that's for later.

Posted by cbagger01 on Dec. 09 2005,23:04

Does booting with

dsl acpi=off

help?

Posted by daklander on Dec. 12 2005,03:02

I believe acpi is off but it's moot. Looks very much like it's the wireless driver causing the problem.

Posted by cbagger01 on Dec. 13 2005,17:33

acpi was causing problems with some people who use ndiswrapper

So that is why I suggested to add acpi=off to your append boot parameters

Posted by daklander on Jan. 22 2006,17:33

Looks like I found the problem. Seems the mouse was the culprit. Though it worked fine running live cd and running in Windows the mouse is the one consistant with the lockup problem that moved to my main computer when I lost the mouse I had on it and plugged in the mouse from the old computer.
It didn't dawn on me until today that DSL has been running fine on that old garage music computer though it's not fired up that often, and this main computer has had the lockup problem when running a Linux OS. This box is running Mepis, a full featured distro that I recommend to folks with full needs just like I recommend DSL to folks that don't need all the bells and whistles, just a great little distro that works.

Thanks again for your thoughts and direction. There was some real brain fade on my part, not picking up the common denominator earlier.

Now I gotta burn and install the new DSL iso I downloaded. :laugh:

Posted by daklander on Jan. 22 2006,17:37

OOPS! I thought I was logged in.
[edit]One of the reasons I didn't catch it earlier is this is a dual boot pc with Mepis and Windows 2K Pro and due to some other issues, hard drive swaps & etc., I've been running primarily in Windows until just recently.[/edit]