anyone ever have this problem? mouse movement and keystrokes not registering? i had to unplug my usb keyboard and plug it right back in for the screensaver go to desktop.

maybe its because i have a razer naga mouse and logitech g15 keyboard and not standard mouse/key?

What distro, what make/model computer, what desktop environment, what screensaver (xscreensaver or one the lamer respins of it, such as gnome-screensaver or kscreensaver)?

My answer might no help at all, but I am facing that problem with a little HP desktop I have. The computer is quite old, I believe it is from about 2004 or 2005, it is Intel M CPU and only support 32 bit software.
few weeks ago started showing that behavior and it is just getting worst. I had Kubuntu 12.04 installed, and I wanted to see if the behavior persist with a different OS so I installed OpenSUSE 12.3 and the same problem happened.

So I think the problems is the hardware and i am considering the possibility to just let it go and acquire something more newer. I suspect a wire or a transistor in the motherboard came undone or the ram is going corrupt. Anyway I do believe it is a hardware problem.

So I am kind of seeing this as my opportunity to upgrade.

Good luck to you my friend.

Its centos 6.4, gnome 2, Its like a space theme screensaver under system-preferences-screen saver. Its a good computer. I5 quad core 3.4ghz , 8gb ram, nvidia gtx 660. Only thing is its on an older HDD which may be the issue idk

I have no idea what might be causing this other than your theory, that for some reason, the machine might be losing connection with the keyboard and mouse while the screensaver is active. I have exclusively USB plug-in keyboards and mice any more and have not seen this before.

One thing you my try is swapping out the USB keyboard for a P/S2 keyboard and mouse (one at a time), if you have access to them and if the computer has P/S2 ports, and seeing if the problem recurs. If it doesn't, that isolates the issue to something to do with the USB. If it does, it's something inside.

I have a pretty farfetched idea for starting to troubleshoot this.

Run dmesg and note how the keyboard and mouse are detected. Grep would be your friend:

Then, after the screensaver takes effect, ssh into the machine and repeat to see if the devices are still showing as detected.

I said it farfetched.

Another idea that comes to mind is to kill the screensaver process, then restart it from the command line and leave the terminal open. When the screensaver takes effect, it might throw some useful error messages.

Again farfetched, but it might tell you something.

both of those commands give me the correct read out. Razer death adder , G15 logitech keyboard. i waited about 15 minutes after screensaver popped and did the commands again in PuTTy on my windows box and it read correct again. The screensaver exited as i moved the mouse so maybe it was a fluke when i posted the OP. Although a few times today it did lag about 10-15 seconds to get the screensaver to close. maybe i'll try a different screensaver program.

thanks for the reply, i did not know the "dmesg" command thanks for teaching me it

Glad you're fixed. It looks like what we used to call when I did support an "FM" problem. Loosely translated, FM stands for "freaking magic."

dmesg is one of the most useful commands I know for hardware stuff. It will serve you well.

yeah for someone just getting into support, as long as its not a PEBCAK (Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard) problem its all good haha.

Support was a valuable experience. It taught me how to troubleshoot.

Good luck.