MS Intellimouse Explorer 2.0 lockups

Murwiz · 12-28-2005, 01:40 PM

My situation: I got a nice new wireless USB mouse for Christmas, but I can't make it work reliably on my Linux system.

The mouse: Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer 2.0
The system: RHEL 4.0, 2.6.9-11.ELsmp kernel
The symptoms: after several hours or even a day or two of operation, suddenly the mouse will freeze up, usually while I'm doing a keyboard operation (!) like ALT-TAB. The keyboard continues to function, but the mouse is gone. Restarting X has no effect. Rebooting is the only way I've found to get the mouse back.

I had made an attempt to install the mouse in my xorg.conf file, but when I made what I thought were the proper changes, X refused to start, and I could not diagnose the problem. So I put everything back the way I found it. The configuration now is:

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse0"
# Identifier "IntelliMouse"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
# Option "Protocol" "ExplorerPS/2"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "yes"
# Option "Buttons" "7"
# Option "ZAxisMapping" "6 7"
EndSection

I'd love to be able to set everything up so I could use the thumb buttons and/or the rocker wheel, but failing that, I'd be happy if it just DIDN'T FREEZE UP twice a day. Right now, it works well enough when it's not frozen: the left and right buttons and the mouse wheel all work, and the thumb buttons work in some situations (so I just ignore them); the rocker doesn't seem to do anything at all.

Berto · 12-30-2005, 12:00 AM

Probably not it, but the Emulate3Buttons option seems odd. Why would you need to emulate when you have a real third button?

The other thing I can think of is a USB problem with your motherboard. Were you using a USB mouse before?

Murwiz · 12-31-2005, 06:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Berto

Probably not it, but the Emulate3Buttons option seems odd. Why would you need to emulate when you have a real third button?

The other thing I can think of is a USB problem with your motherboard. Were you using a USB mouse before?

No; it's a brand-new Dell machine. Since posting this, I found that I can clear the lockup by unplugging the wireless mouse base unit from the USB and plugging it in again. The lockups seem to be more likely when using the mouse and (PS/2) keyboard simultaneously, e.g., CTRL-clicking.

The current X config is what was in place when I started ...