Although this problem pertains to a laptop, my questions are more general, so I'm posting here.

I have a fedora core 5 installation on a Dell laptop with standard xorg.conf mouse settings as shown below. When I plug my PS2 mouse into the laptop, the touchpad and PS2 mouse both work fine, except for the scroll wheel on the mouse, which seems to do nothing [in multiple applications].

Given what I've read over the last couple of days, I suspect that the existing xorg.conf settings (below) are correct. So my questions are:

1) I feel like I'm flying blind with my xorg.conf experiments - I simply edit the file, reboot, and find that there is no improvement with the scroll wheel. I'm hoping that someone can suggest some basic tests that will help me to understand what is going wrong.

2) What's the recommended way of 'reloading' xorg.conf? If it is to restart the window server, how is this done on a PC that boots to runlevel 5?

Thanks for any tips,

Jason.

------------ extract from xorg.conf --------------------

Section "ServerLayout"
...
InputDevice "Synaptics" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Mouse0" "AlwaysCore"
EndSection

...

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "yes"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Synaptics"
Driver "synaptics"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "yes"
Option "LeftEdge" "120"
Option "RightEdge" "830"
Option "TopEdge" "120"
Option "BottomEdge" "650"
Option "FingerLow" "14"
Option "FingerHigh" "15"
Option "MaxTapMove" "110"
Option "VertScrollDelta" "20"
Option "HorizScrollDelta" "20"
Option "MinSpeed" "0.3"
Option "MaxSpeed" "0.75"
EndSection

tell me which Dell Laptop you've got exactly and then I try to show you how to get this working.

regards

I'm not sure whether the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file is case sensitive, but I have Option "Protocol" "ImPS/2" in my file.

As far as re-starting X goes, you should be able to use <Ctrl><Alt><Backspace> to restart it as long as that functionality isn't disabled in xorg.conf. It's disabled if the line Option "DontZap" "true" is in the ServerFlags section.

It's an Inspiron 8200.

Thanks,

J.

So it's a Latitude C840 only a different modem card and video card for the purchase.
This is a working xorg.conf LINK

So you're suggesting that I should drop the synaptics entry? Won't this remove touchpad functionality?

The xorg.conf in the link above uses an identical mouse InputDevice as in mine (above), but has no synaptics entry.

Just a repost because this thread's gone dead without any suggestions to (1) in my initial post. I think suggestion #5 is a dud.

I have the same problem. My configurtion in xorg.conf uses is the same as int that link - without the synaptics entry and both, mouse and touchpad, works except for the mouse wheel and touchpad "tap" feature.
Im running Gentoo at Compaq Armada 110 laptop.


PS: When I try to use separate configuration for touchpad and for mouse (as logularjason wrote) I get error when loading X windows - cannot initialize Synaptics corepointer or somethng like that. But configuration as odcheck worte works fine - except for that mouse wheel ((.