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Ubuntu 8.10 - Keyboard and Mouse freeze on boot. Please Help!!

Asked by Formal Cause

First of all I am a newbie.

Here's the deal. I have a partitioned hard drive with XP and Ubuntu 8.10. I was using Ubuntu almost exclusively until the keyboard and mouse began to "hang" for no apparent reason. The keyboard lights for caps lock, etc. would flash but the keyboard would do nothing, and same with the mouse - nothing at all. No matter how long I waited 1 hour or 2 days nothing would happen. I had to hard reset the PC.

This happened several times over the span of a few weeks and no the big problem hit. When I boot up and get to the login screen the system locks if I try to use the mouse or keyboard. So, I can't get into the system to upgrade or make any changes. XP still works fine and never hangs in the same way, but I want my Linux back!!

I do have some files on the Ubuntu partition, but if worse comes to worst I will need some basic instructions on how to wipe the partition so I can try again with 9.04.

Can anyone help?? Thanks in advance!!

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Wim (launchpad-xs4all) said : 		#1

Formal Cause,

your "worst case scenario" would be: take the Ubuntu-CD and re-install it all again... But i will try to find a shorter way.

Few questions:

are keyboard and mouse cordless or are they wired to your PC ?!?

if you boot your PC, i assume that keyboard still works in the GRUB-menu (choose between Ubuntu and Window$); select Ubuntu-recovery-version (mostly the second line), press <Enter>, and during boot keep steadily and slowly pressing <Caps-Lock> and <Num-Lock> key: Caps, Num, Caps, Num, etc.
Are the lights going ON and OFF and does that still work at the login-screen ?!?

Tomorrow i will read your answers...

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Formal Cause (formalcause) said : 		#2

I'm sorry to say that I got impatient and ditched the Ubuntu and installed Suse in its place. I am working on it right now and have had no hardware issues.

Thanks for your help anyway - I appreciate the response.

For future threads - The keyboard would work for a little while during the boot up process. I could use it in GRUB to switch between XP and Ubuntu. I could also use it to start typing in my password. But invariably it would start flashing at me and stop working (both the keyboard and the mouse).

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Wim (launchpad-xs4all) said : 		#3

For the future too:

(i think that most probably problem is a KVM-switch; device to connect 1 keyboard 1 mouse and 1 screen on to 2 PC's)

Some KVM-switches react on keycodes; after this sequence of keys they switch to the other connected PC; if this other PC is powered OFF, then you can not switch back to the first PC.

Solution is:
disconnect the power-cord of the PC that is powered OFF
and hope the KVM-switch finds the first PC (booting up) ...
IF the already running PC is not found, you HAVE to reset that PC to force the KVM-switch back to the booting PC...

Can you help with this problem?

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