Ubuntu

no mouse cursor visible in 16.04.1

Asked by Michael J Holley

With both Ubuntu 15.10 and now Ubuntu 16.04.1, when I boot in the test (not installed) mode, no mouse cursor is displayed on the screen. I can move around a little bit on the desktop using the tab and arrow keys, but basically I can accomplish nothing useful without being able to move around the screen and select the boxes on the left hand side of the desktop. My computer is an HP h9-1420t desktop with an Intel Core i7-3770 3.4Ghz processor and 18GB of memory. The DVD is used to boot Ubuntu on a machine with Windows 10 Home installed on a Samsung SSD 850 250GB drive. There is also a Seagate Barracuda 2TB hard drive. The mouse is an HP Optical Mouse connected to a USB 2.0 port. Any ideas on how to fix this problem?

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Michael J Holley
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Manfred Hampl (m-hampl) said : 		#1

1. Try disconnecting and reconnecting the mouse

2. If you open a terminal (e.g. by simultaneously pressing ctrl-alt-t) and issue the command

lsusb

do you see the mouse in the list?

3. Do you have a chance to try a different mouse?

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Michael J Holley (mjholley) said : 		#2

I tried disconnecting and reconnecting the HP Mouse - No Change
I executed LSUSB - I could see nothing in the list of devices that appeared to be the HP Mouse.
Without disconnecting the HP Mouse, I connected a Lenovo Mouse - It worked immediately and showed up in the LSUSB list
In addition, the HP Mouse was now also working, but it still was not list in LSUSB list as far as I could tell.
I removed the Lenovo Mouse and the HP Mouse continued to work.
I Restarted Ubuntu and the HP Mouse still worked.
I then completely shut down the computer, Power Off
I once again rebooted Ubuntu and the HP Mouse STILL WORKED!!!
As far as I can tell, the HP Mouse is still NOT listed by LSUSB.
I haven't a clue what was "broken" or what was "fixed" by all this activity.
At this point, I have no idea whether the HP Mouse will show up again the next time I boot Ubuntu 16.04.1.

My primary operating system is Windows 10 Home.

Do you or anyone else have any idea what was changed by my actions???

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Michael J Holley (mjholley) said : 		#3

As noted, the HP Mouse remained working after a Power Off reboot of Ubuntu.
However, I booted Windows 10 Home and worked for a while.
I then rebooted Ubuntu and now the HP Mouse was absent again.
I disconnected the HP Mouse and reconnected it to the same USB port - No change
I disconnected the HP Mouse and reconnected it to a DIFFERENT USB port - The HP Mouse was now working.
I disconnected the HP Mouse from the new USB port and returned it to original USB port - The HP Mouse continued to work.
I ran LSUSB and again nothing in the list was identifiable as the HP Mouse.

So, I have a tacky work-around to my problem, but there has to be some kind of explanation as to why the HP Mouse doesn't appear and then can be made to appear by the USB port switching.

Oh, before switching the HP Mouse to a different USB port, I did try inserting a USB flash drive into the same port that I would move the HP Mouse to. That action did not trigger the appearance of the mouse.

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Michael J Holley (mjholley) said : 		#4

Problem Solved but NOT understood
Thank you Manfred Hampl for pointing me in the right direction.

I connected the Lenovo Mouse to the USB port that the HP Mouse had previously used.
I booted to Ubuntu and the Lenovo Mouse worked and showed up in LSUSB as "Lenovo".
In a separate reboot of Ubuntu, I connected the HP Mouse to a different USB port. It worked.
I rebooted to Windows 10 Home and worked for a couple of minutes.
I rebooted to Ubuntu, and the HP Mouse still worked attached to its new USB port.
I ran LSUSB and the HP Mouse STILL does NOT exist. Strange!!!
I ran "xinput -- list" and the mouse DID show up as "Pixart HP USB Optical Mouse" in the device tree.

SO, I don't have a clue why the HP Mouse is incompatible with one particular USB port (on a 4-port USB 2.0 splitter), or why the HP Mouse does NOT exist in LSUSB, but that is the case.

The problem is solved, but with no real understanding of what was actually causing the HP Mouse not to work.