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4 Posts
0
8926
October 21st, 2010 02:00
Disoriented mouse with dual-monitor
My laptop gets into a state where, when I click on the mouse buttons, it thinks that it's pointing somewhere that it's not. When I click on the mouse buttons, usually nothing happens, although sometimes the right button causes a menu to pop up somewhere else on the screens.
I have to go find the window where I was working before, click on the right mouse button to pull up a menu, then go to where I want to work, click on the right mouse button to pull up a menu, and then I can work on that window.
Also, selecting with the right mouse button is not implicitly copying, and the middle mouse button does not paste.
I have no idea what's causing this. It happens pretty frequently when I work in dual-monitor mode. Things work fine when I log in, then this problem kicks in after awhile. I can clear it by rebooting. I've seen it happen with single-monitor mode as well, just not as often.
I haven't seen any posts by anyone else having this problem.
I'm running Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS ("lucid") on a Dell Latitude E6500, with BIOS A23.
Carl Ponder
4 Posts
1
May 25th, 2011 13:00
So far it looks like I can prevent the problem by killing the Touchpad:
xinput set-prop "AlpsPS/2 ALPS DualPoint TouchPad" "Device Enabled" 0
xinput set-prop "PS/2 ALPS DualPoint TouchPad" "Device Enabled" 0
Which one I use depends on whether the laptop is docked or not.
The mouse stays oriented 100% after that.
I believe the root cause is that the Synaptics driver does not manage the Alps touchpad on the Dell Latitude E6500.
Carl Ponder
4 Posts
0
October 21st, 2010 14:00
Some more info: some people reported the same problem on the Ubuntu support pages:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1262224
They believed the problem was the USB and reported some success with plugging the mouse into a different socket. This approach did not work for me, and the built-in mouse buttons on the laptop have the same problem. In the meantime I have also cross-posted this problem to Ubuntu as well:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1602213