[lug] removing imsettings: did I muck up this install or are my USB ports fubar?

Michael J. Hammel mjhammel at graphics-muse.org
Thu Mar 19 09:06:27 MDT 2009


Long sad story begin:

Yesterday I accidentally used the Input Method dialog for GNOME on an
F10 system.  IM then caused a tray icon to be opened for every
application.  Ugh.  So I tried to disable them.  They wouldn't go away.
Every time I'd exit the tray icon (from its menu) the icon would come
back - auto restarted itself.  What the heck is IM for anyway?

I couldn't find a way to make this go away so I uninstalled imsettings.
The tray icons went away.

Now I have a problem that may or may not be associated with this.
Before removing imsettings I had a mouse and keyboard plugged into the
USB ports.  The mouse would periodically lock up.  Plug in another USB
mouse and it would work, at least for awhile.  Eventually it would lock
up.  Reboot required.   

Switched to a PS/2 mouse (only one PS/2 port on motherboard: ASUS
M3N78-VM).  Mouse seems okay now.  Ran into Input Method fiasco.  Now
the keyboard will, after random amounts of time after reboot, get stuck
repeating a single key.  No other input is possible from the keyboard.
It's not always the same key.  It happens on multiple USB ports (front
and back).  Mouse works, so select restart.  X comes down and while the
services are stopped you can see the key repeating on the console screen
- so this probably isn't just an X problem.  Looks like either USB or
keyboard controller related (do we still have keyboard controllers on
modern motherboards that use USB input?  I'm gettin' old.).

I've disabled USB 2.0 support in the BIOS as my next step and will try
that at lunch.  Problem is random so you have to use the keyboard for
awhile before it shows up.  USB has keyboard, mouse and a Rosewill
52-in-1 card reader connected to it.  Latter was set to "Auto" in the
bios for various devices.  I switched those to "HDD" this morning as
another test.  Have not tried disconnecting the card reader from USB
yet.

Did removing IMSettings have anything to do with this?  Is my USB
controller fubar?  This is a brand new motherboard that worked for less
than a month.  Stupid me:  it was working so I threw out the box.  No
box for RMA back to NewEgg.  *sigh*  I was so happy with a Quad core and
two monitors.  *sniff*

Side note:  the MB has nVidia 8200 video.  Separate system exhibited
similar problem with F9 and nvidia card (problem cleared on that system
with F10 nvidia drivers).  Is it possible that nvidia drivers could
cause conflicts with USB?

End long sad story.
-- 
Michael J. Hammel                                    Principal Software Engineer
mjhammel at graphics-muse.org                           http://graphics-muse.org
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