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Ubuntu doesn't recognize my touchpad if I boot with my external drive connected to the USB port. Why would this be the case? Where should I look to start troubleshooting the issue and how can I tell it to not do that anymore? When I have an actual USB mouse plugged in I can use the mouse OR the touchpad so it's not that it thinks the drive is a mouse or anything. The touchpad does not show up in xinput --list when this happens.

Edit: I am using Ubuntu version 14.04, it is the OS running on the internal drive. I did not mean that I actually booted from the external drive, I mean that I booted my system while the external drive was connected to the USB port. That probably didn't have anything to do with it, it was just the only parameter that was different during this particular boot. The problem is recurring and intermittent. The first time it happened it was upon waking up from pm-hibernate, subsequently it randomly happens when I boot, it just doesn't detect the touchpad at all.

The only common variable seems to be that it happens when I reboot into Ubuntu from Windows, but again I want to emphasize that may not necessarily be the case. Other times I boot into Ubuntu after being in Windows and the touchpad works fine. It does actually seem unlikely because my notebook has two separate internal SSD's so I am booting Ubuntu/Windows from entirely separate physical disks.

I worked my way through the troubleshooting steps on another post and it did not work. The synclient program says Couldn't find synaptics properties. No synaptics driver loaded?. xinput list lists the USB optical mouse but not the touchpad.

This seems to me like it should be pretty straightforward to troubleshoot. I know the synaptics driver exists because my touchpad works sometimes. So where is it and how do I load it? How can I see a raw list of what input devices are connected to my system, not just the ones that have drivers loaded? Doesn't the kernel check what hardware is present when it boots, and then pass that information to a module that loads drivers? So can't I just manually load the driver?

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  • Welcome to AskUbuntu! ;-) Could you please give us a bit more information like: what version of Ubuntu you're running? What OS you're running on the internal HDD? Please edit your question and add this information... Like it is, it's a bit meagre to start an investigation!
    – Fabby
    Jan 22, 2015 at 12:59
  • The question has been updated.
    – JtheDude
    Jan 23, 2015 at 3:35

1 Answer 1

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Looks like Windows doesn't reset all its settings when it shuts down and the warm boot of the tablet doesn't either. (I predict this never happens when cold booting)

So to "reset" the mouse the best is to file this as a BIOS bug to the manufacturer, (or upgrade the BIOS if one is available) but in the mean time, do the following: When it works, do an lsmod |sort > ~/Documents/MouseWorking.txt and when is doesn't an lsmod |sort > ~/Documents/MouseNotWorking.txt, then diff MouseNotWorking.txt MouseWorking.txt and look for the differences.

then:

sudo modprobe MissingModule

If none are missing (50/50 chance, as this looks like a BIOS bug) try:

sudo rmmod psmouse
sudo modprobe psmouse

and then you'll have a 75% chance of working around this issue.

I realise this is not a "solution" (the BIOS upgrade is) and just a workaround, but it's something...

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  • And as you're a reputation 6 user: If this all works, don't forget to click the grey check-mark under the "0" at the left of this text, which means "yes, this answer is valid"! ;-)
    – Fabby
    Jan 23, 2015 at 9:59
  • If it's a BIOS bug then wouldn't it show up in Windows too? I know if Windows doesn't shut down correctly then Ubuntu can't mount my NTFS Shared Data volume, but it actually happened again just now after a cold boot when the last 4 or 5 times I've used it I've only used Ubuntu
    – JtheDude
    Jan 23, 2015 at 21:20
  • Also, it is currently not working but the output of cat /proc/bus/input/devices shows the device: I: Bus=0011 Vendor=0002 Product=0007 Version=01b1 N: Name="SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad" P: Phys=isa0060/serio1/input0 S: Sysfs=/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input8 U: Uniq= H: Handlers=mouse0 event5 B: PROP=9 B: EV=b B: KEY=6420 30000 0 0 0 0 B: ABS=260800011000003
    – JtheDude
    Jan 23, 2015 at 21:39
  • No, as Windows is not used to have other OSes running after it, the drivers get rigorously tested by MS on start-up, and everything goes in there, not in how the system is left dangling after you reboot it... Ah! Cold boot is another matter altogether! Now my hunch is invalidated! If you leave me another comments, I'll delete my answer... :(
    – Fabby
    Jan 23, 2015 at 21:59

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