non responsive keyboard/touchpad/USB mouse

English Hardware
1

Hello ,

I am running openSUSE 11.1 for the past 2 years. (DELL Vostro 1500) No problems.
Today the system would not go up saying… could not update ICEauthority
which I took care by (as SU) chown -R alon /home/alon
At least now I got the desktop up and running. But the Keyboard mouse and touchpad are non responsive.
I ran sax2-r because I cannot OK because the GUI requires a keyboard or mouse.
ran sax2 -a → to no avail.

The keyboard works from the command line when I log in in safe mode.
But not once the X is running.

I am running out of ideas
Any ideas how to get my keyboard to work once the X is running.

Thanks

2

Did this suddenly appear, or after some updates ?

3

I am not sure.
… I did do one update yesterday I think. How do u suggest we look into that?

Thanks

4

I noticed you mentioned that you are running a Dell.

Does it have a touch point mouse? (the eraser head in the middle of the keyboard)

Dell is notorious for the touch point mouse going bad and screwing up all other mouse devices including the touch pad and usb.

It may even effect the keyboard I’m not sure on this point though.

Try going into bios and disabling the touch point/touch pad. If the keyboard and usb mouse work afterward then the touch point is the problem.

In which case you have two options.

  1. replace the keyboard
  2. If you never use the touch point. Remove the keyboard and cut the small ribbon going to the touch point mouse. (I did this on my Dell)

If you Google “Remove keyboard Dell enter model here”, you can find step by step instructions with pictures. It’s really quite a simple process.

If you chose option 2 cut out a half inch section of the ribbon to prevent the wires from accidentally lining back up which could cause trouble again.