[ILUG] laptop keyboard problems

[Stephen Brooks]

Michael Watterson wrote:
>
>> On Monday 25 June 2007 22:17, Michael Thompson wrote:
>>  
>>> On 25/06/07, Michael Thompson <michaelnt at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>    
>>>> On 25/06/07, Andrew Court <syklops at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>      
>>>>> Did you say it works ok with FreeDos?
>>>>>         
>>>> It's an intermittent problem so not sure
>>>>       
>>> rebooting the laptop fixes the keyboard so i think it is a software
>>> problem. boTh the keyboard and the touchpad stop working at the same
>>> time.
>>>     
> It's not terribly significant that keypad & touch both fail as the 
> i8042 or equivalent can interface to both and the keypad scanning 
> micro can sometimes incorporate mouse or touchpad interface.
>
> If a reboot always fixes it, then it does seem more likely a software 
> problem. I had issue on Fiesty Fawn on Dell Laptop where for no 
> apparent reason on next logon the mouse cursor was OK till you 
> actually logged on. then vanished. I had to edit a file to tell 
> display HWCursor=OFF. Obviously this is not the same problem, but 
> suggests it could happen with out any HW failure. (My touchpad and 
> external mouse still worked, just no display of pointer).
>
    Possibly completely unrelated but had a problem relating to USB on a 
recently purchased Dell E521 (I know, it's a desktop bear with me).
    Basically 5 minutes after boot the usb controller lost the run of 
itself and any devices attached needed to be replugged to work again.  
This was only a problem only experienced under Ubuntu Fiesty Fawn MS XP 
was fine.  Googling pointed towards upgrading the bios to latest version 
to resolve it.  Hey presto one bios update later usb keyboard and mouse 
behaved.

HTH

-- 
Stephen Brooks <stephen at lincor.com>      Digital Depot, Thomas Street
Senior Software Engineer                            Dublin 8, Ireland
Lincor Solutions Ltd.                          Ph: +353 (0) 1 4893683