[SOLVED?]USB mouse not always working; some errors at boot

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anthm76

[SOLVED?]USB mouse not always working; some errors at boot

Post by anthm76 »

UPDATE: See my last post for a possible solution/workaround

Hi, I wasn't sure whether this went under the Hardware section but since I'm new to Linux I'll just start here.

I have put my system specs in my signature. Currently, I have installed Linux Mint in the new system listed, alongside Win XP, and Mint has it's own /, home/, and swap partitions (so it's a real install and not WUBI).

My main problem is, sometimes when I boot Mint, my USB Laser mouse has no power and does not work. Unplugging and plugging it back in fixes it, or so does a reboot sometimes since this problem is intermittent. My keyboard is USB and that always works, also I have a USB game controller that seems to be getting power as well. The mouse is a Microsoft Sidewinder X3 Laser mouse. It uses the standard Microsoft intellipoint drivers under Windows, and I have no problems with it under XP. When it is detected, it works perfectly, and I never "lose" it or have any problems. It has two extra buttons, one on each side of the mouse that act as forward/back buttons in a browser and these also work correctly with Mint.
If you would like the results of running Xinput list, let me know, I was going to include it here but it seemed to make the post much longer and I wasn't sure of the value in this.

Also here is my Xorg.conf:

Code: Select all

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier	"Configured Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier	"Default Screen"
	Monitor		"Configured Monitor"
	Device		"Configured Video Device"
	DefaultDepth	24
EndSection

Section "Module"
	Load	"glx"
EndSection

Section "Device"
	Identifier	"Configured Video Device"
	Driver	"fglrx"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
	Option	"DontZap"	"False"
EndSection
so nothing about any input devices is listed. Can I put something here to "force" it to enumerate?

Now, while troubleshooting this, I noticed I get a very quick list or errors when I boot, after GRUB but right before the Mint logo. It is less than 1 second, I had to actually record the screen with a video camera to get a screen grab of the errors. Here is what I saw:

Code: Select all

Starting up...
[     2.372042]  ata1: softreset failed (device not ready)
[     4.232048] hub 2-0:1.0: unable to enumerate USB device on port 4
[     4.426404] [Firmware Bug]: powernow-k8: Your BIOS does not provide ACPI _PSS objects in a way that Linux understands. Please report this to the Linux ACPI maintainers and complain
 to your BIOS vendor.
[     4.426463] [Firmware Bug]: powernow-k8: Your BIOS does not provide ACPI _PSS objects in a way that Linux understands. Please report this to the Linux ACPI maintainers and complain
 to your BIOS vendor.
[     4.426519] [Firmware Bug]: powernow-k8: Your BIOS does not provide ACPI _PSS objects in a way that Linux understands. Please report this to the Linux ACPI maintainers and complain
 to your BIOS vendor.
[     4.426574] [Firmware Bug]: powernow-k8: Your BIOS does not provide ACPI _PSS objects in a way that Linux understands. Please report this to the Linux ACPI maintainers and complain
 to your BIOS vendor.
Loading, please wait...
So, does anyone have an idea of how I can get Linux to recognize my laser mouse each boot? Also, should I report the other issues found during boot, and to whom? For more info, since this is a new system, I have not tried other distros on it yet, although I would bet Ubuntu would do the same thing.
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 2 times in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
anthm76

Re: USB mouse not always working; some errors during boot

Post by anthm76 »

A couple of things to update. First, I forgot to mention that I applied all updates, even the riskier level 5 updates, and this didn't help. Secondly, I just tried a Kubuntu live CD and I had the same result so as I figured it is an upstream issue. I am going to try a SUSE liveCD and I will update you with the results, to see if it behaves differently on a different distro.
anthm76

Re: USB mouse not always working; some errors during boot

Post by anthm76 »

Thanks, I forgot to mention that I had already enabled USB mouse in the bios, that didn't help. I edited my Xorg.conf but it didn't seem to help, I think it either gets detected or not early on before loading the config file but I could be wrong.

SUSE didn't have this problem, but I am hoping to get Mint working as I like it much better. Also, I tried both the 64 and 32 bit versions of Mint and they both did the same thing
anthm76

Re: USB mouse not always working; some errors during boot

Post by anthm76 »

I checked out Ubuntu's forums, and did a quick search and there are others with various USB mouse problems in this latest release. So I don't know how widespread it is but there is something going on. Usually people note that their problem didn't exist in Ubuntu 8.10. So far I haven't seen any mention of solid solutions other than workarounds. I may try to go back to Mint 6 for now, just to confirm that this is in fact my problem. If so I may stick with 6 until I see solutions upstream. I think 6 is still supported, am I correct?
emorrp1

Re: USB mouse not always working; some errors during boot

Post by emorrp1 »

ii Candor ii wrote:That's what I would do if I were you (switch back to Mint 6). Yes I believe 6 is supported until 2012 if I'm not mistaken.
nah, only 18 months support on desktop - until mint 9 LTS (May 2010), LTS have 3 years support, so even mint 5 is "only" supported until May 2011.
anthm76

Re: USB mouse not always working; some errors during boot

Post by anthm76 »

Installing Mint 6 solves the problem, so in this case it was something upstream in Ubuntu 9.04, I don't get any of the error messages I captured above. I will stay with this for a while, maybe I'll check from time to time on the Ubuntu forums to see if anyone mentions a fix.
emorrp1

Re: USB mouse not always working; some errors during boot

Post by emorrp1 »

Hello Albie, and welcome to Linux Mint, I don't see why not, it's certainly worth a try.
anthm76

Re: USB mouse not always working; some errors during boot

Post by anthm76 »

I revisited this and I think I solved it in my case. I don't know if this will help others that have had mouse issues in Mint and Ubuntu, so maybe it's not truly solved, it may be more of a temporary workaround.

In my case I tried something painfully obvious but that I hadn't tried: I moved the mouse to another USB port. After doing this, I put in Mint 7 x64, and on bootup, I don't see the USB error I posted above about the failure to enumerate device on port 4 (the other errors are still there). And after many more than 10 reboots, the mouse is always detected. It would never have worked that many times before. Just to be sure I switched the mouse back to it's previous port and I got the USB enumeration error again, and the mouse was not active.

So I would suggest trying all USB ports, including switching with stuff already connected, and see if it stays stable for you. I don't know if it could be a bad port, because it worked in Mint 6 and Ubuntu 8.10 (as well as windows) and even worked in Mint 7 intermittently. It may just be an enumeration issue in the latest kernel. But at any rate give it a try, it may be a successful workaround for you too.
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