Flickering cursor and associated nuisance

[GuruPrasad]

Hello everyone,
I am running Mandriva 2007 on a Compaq Presario 2184 notebook. I have a wierd problem, which is turning out to be major nuisance. Here are the symptoms:
1. (less severe) When I open the start menu in KDE, the selection keeps flickering onto the first option (the most used appication), so its virtually impossible to select anything with the mouse cursor (it's a Synaptics touchpad, by the way)
2. (more severe) Firefox 'freezes' consistently, until I (i) click on a text bar, such as the location or the search bar, and (ii) enter some text. When I click on the text bar, the cursor flickers rapidly, until text is entered. This is really painful while using Firefox in KDE.
3. (least severe) In some other applications, when something is elected, there's the constant flickering

I've noticed that these symptoms are most pronounced in KDE, but *almost* dissapear when I'm using ICEWM. Also, ever since the problem appeared, KDE (and less frequently, ICEWM) hangs much more often (coincidence? or some process running in background?).

I'd appreciate any help in this regard, and thanks in advance.

Guru

[envirocbr]

I had a simliar problem as yours however it was on a Desktop PC.

Have you every tried using Mandriva 2006? With an older version of KDE? Also you may want to try upgrading your KDE as well.

I am not sure but maybe looking into your Xorg_config files will help you.

Go here for some updated stuff. www.seerofsouls.com

[wolfton]

This is just a thought, but have you tried your mouse settings? Could it be that your touchpad or mouse driver is incorrect?

[fingal]

Hi - Not really a fix, but I have a similar (very occasional) problem using Mandriva 2006. Sometimes without warning menu options will select themselves and start a couple of apps.

It doesn't happen much, but it began after upgrading XOrg with some security fixes several months ago. Sounds like a bug ... but it's very hard to pin down/capture because it occurs so quickly.

[GuruPrasad]

Thanks everyone, for the replies.

Have you every tried using Mandriva 2006? With an older version of KDE? Also you may want to try upgrading your KDE as well.

I am not sure but maybe looking into your Xorg_config files will help you.

I recently upgraded from Mandriva 2006 to Mandriva 2007, and the KDE version is 3.5. Could you suggest anything specific to look for in the Xorg_config file?

This is just a thought, but have you tried your mouse settings? Could it be that your touchpad or mouse driver is incorrect?

I tried playing around with the settings in qsynaptics, but to no avail. Incidentally, I've noticed the problem even when the touchpad is switched off (hardware).
Any clues?
Guru

[fingal]

I wonder if you're using an ATI video card. I use one, and I decided to look in /var/log/Xorg.9.log

I used the cat command to read it. For example cat Xorg.9.log ... Then I couldn't see many problems, but I tried:

cat Xorg.9.log | grep bad

This was after seeing the word 'bad' repeated several times. For example I get:

(II) RADEON(0): Not using default mode "320x175" (bad mode clock/interlace/doublescan)
(II) RADEON(0): Not using default mode "320x200" (bad mode clock/interlace/doublescan)
(II) RADEON(0): Not using default mode "360x200" (bad mode clock/interlace/doublescan)
...

That goes on for about 40+ lines. Could this be a bug related to Xorg version 9.*.* and an ATI card?

I'm shooting in the dark, but I don't mind trying that approach.

[wolfton]

I still haven't figured the mouse thing out yet, and now my sound server stopped working.

What I don't get it this happens with nearly every hard drive install I try, and with many different ditros.

Its almost worth creating my own live boot system with only my /home directory actually residing on the hard drive.

I have updated/installed packages. Perhaps I should uninstall and see if it fixes the problem.

[fingal]

I still haven't figured the mouse thing out yet, and now my sound server stopped working.

What I don't get it this happens with nearly every hard drive install I try, and with many different ditros.

Its almost worth creating my own live boot system with only my /home directory actually residing on the hard drive.

I have updated/installed packages. Perhaps I should uninstall and see if it fixes the problem.

I think it would help to try anything which occurs to you and see what happens. Sooner or later you'll figure out the problem using that method.

Try checking log files in /var/log for errors and warnings. Issue the dmesg command and scan through that to see if the kernel is picking up any hardware issues. It sounds like a hardware problem of some sort.

You will need to be root to look in log files etc. Often error messages are being logged on a *nix system without a users knowledge. This is something you'll find useful again and again.

Strange that your sound server isn't working. I wonder if your hdd is starting to break down?