Nadia, trackpad frozen on one account only, mouse working
 

My Asus EeePC with Mint 14 Nadia suddenly behaves strangely: the pointer is frozen when logging into one account. This happens after logging in, before the desktop is shown, when you only see the pointer in the center of a black screen. However, I just found out that the mouse works ok, so this is something with the trackpad.
On another account, everthing works fine.
Where would I start troubleshooting this one?

Thankx

K.

This is just a shot in the dark, but I'll take it anyway.

If it's just happening to one login and other logins have full functionality, the most likely cause is that one of the hidden (preceded by a dot) files or directories in that user's home folder is messed up. You can test this by logging in as root, copying that user's hidden files and folders to a safe location, then logging back in as user.

When you log in as user, the required hidden files and directories will be recreated in their default state. If everything works, you will know that the problem lies with one of the configuration files that you moved out. If you want or need to know which one, you can log out as user, move one file/directory back in place as root, log back as user, and test, then repeat until the culprit is identified. Otherwise, if just reconfiguring the default settings as needed would be easier, you can just reconfigure them and press on.

If my hypothesis is correct, I have no idea what file/directory it might be, but it's likely one connected to the desktop configuration.

Thank Frank, I'll give this a try. Seems a lot like how we used to troubleshoot the terrifying frequent freezes in bad old mac os 9 and older. ;-)

:)

The trouble has changed. Troubleshooting remains the same: Systematically rule possible suspects out one at a time until you identify the culprit, then shoot the culprit.

98% of troubleshooting is finding the culprit. The rest is easy.

Right!
At last I did your trick, and it works! I didnt care to find the exact culprit though, but removing the hidden folders that most likely had something to do with the desktop and gnome did the trick.
Removing the hidden files in the user's root folder did not have any effect.

Thank you!

Glad it's fixed and that I could help.