Mouse Freezing

[Oldmacpcguy+5]

I just installed Mint 18.3 with Cinnamon for the first time. It keeps freezing my cursor in four minutes or less after each boot.

I have Mint installed on its own dedicated drive. Windows is on another drive in my Dell Optiplex 9010 MT. I have the side of the PC open so I can just move the Sata and power plugs from one drive to the other for now.

Do I need to download drivers for all my devices like with Windows or are they already loaded? Thanks

[kc1di]

Hello Oldmacpcguy+5 and Welcome to Linux Mint Forums,

Sorry your having problems. It's often caused by the graphics card driver Especially if it's Nvidia. The open source driver that comes with the install is good but on some Nvidia cards you'll need to install the Manufactures driver. It would be helpful to us if you could go to a terminal and type or copy and paste the following command and then post the output back here

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inxi -Fxz

If the card is infact Nvidia you should follow the suggestions in the release notes found here: https://www.linuxmint.com/rel_sylvia_cinnamon.php scroll down to the section Solving freezes during the boot sequence.
Good Luck.

[Oldmacpcguy+5]

kc1di - Thanks for you response. Yes I have NVIDIA EVGA GeForce GTX 750-Ti SC Graphics card. I don't understand your instructions "go to a terminal and type or copy and paste the following command and then post the output back here". Sorry but I know nothing about Linux. What is a terminal and what command do I type and where? Also what do you mean by output. I was able to load Linux by watching a couple You tube videos. That's the extent of my familiarity with Linux.

I also watched the three videos at the link you gave me. But I don't know how to bring up the window(s) shown for changing to "nomodeset". I could go to the NVIDIA site and install the manufacturer's drivers but the mouse freezes before I am able to do that.

I will first follow a suggestion at the bottom of the tutorial to install an earlier version of Linux. I'll try Linux Mint 8 and then check back here. Thank you.

[kc1di]

Ok Which version of Linux mint are your using?
if It's Cinnamon desktop then the terminal is found on the bottom panel close to the Firefox Icon. You simply type in this command :

Code: Select all

inxi -Fxz

It will return an output on the terminal screen with all the hardware specifics about your machine. Thats what we need to know.
But you already answered one of the questions your video card is Nvidia. The pictures on the link I posted before are pretty specific about how to enter the nomodeset in the boot line of grub. Just very carefully follow the video. and you'll be fine, once you get the desktop up and running Then you need to go to the driver manager found under Administration in the Main Menu. It should recommend a driver for your card (You will need to be connected to the Internet) in order to install it.
Hope you can understand what I'm saying here if not just let me know and will try to explain further.
You can download a driver from Nvidia but that tends to be complicated to install and it's much easier to just install it from the driver manager.
Good luck.

[Oldmacpcguy+5]

kc1di - Ok the first thing I did today is follow the suggestion at the bottom of one of the links you gave me regarding mouse freeze which is trying an earlier version of Linux Mint Cinnamon. I downloaded version 8, installed it and bingo the freeze problem went away. I will need to re-read your latest info a few times and play with it a bit to fully understand what you are saying but I think I will eventually be able to follow it. I did log into the Nvidia driver download and downloaded the driver. I think I got it to run. The Windows 7 type prompts and confirmations where not there, but I think I got the driver installed.

Thanks so much for you assistance. I'm sure that over time I will be back here for more help on other issues but, like with other OS's, theres no substitute for some trial and error. Regards.