** I fixed it: see below **

I've had great success with Mandrake 10 until just a while ago. I used urpmi to install the 2.6.3-13mdk kernel from update source. then I rebooted into the new kernel and things were fine with working mouse as X started but as soon as IceWM (my default) appears the mouse stops dead in the center of the screen.

The first time this happened I still had keyboard control and attempted to run HardDrake, but it wouldn't start at all. Then the taskbar itself stopped responding and the system was completely frozen - numlock and caps lock no longer responding even, so I couldn't switch to command line. Also the CPU/Network indicators were stopped.

I rebooted once more into the new kernel and had the same problem of mouse stopping and system freezing at the instant the IceWM desktop appears, but now without even a second of keyboard response.

I rebooted into the original Mandrake 10 Official kernel and the same thing happened. I do NOT have the Nvidia drivers installed and I am using a USB mouse.

I'm going to reboot and try the failsafe kernel and try to get to the point where I can make a rescue cd and try to run diagnostics. In the meantime, any observations and suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading this longish post - I tried to include all relevant information.

** What I did (was nothing special or perhaps even related)
On reboot into the 2.6.3-13 kernel I did Interactive Startup and prevent dm from running (so it wouldn't automatically boot into a window manager). Then I installed the Nvidia drivers that I had downloaded a few days ago and did my XF86Config-4 file editing.

I did a test 'startx' and it worked. Then I went ahead and rebooted (don't know if that was necessary and everything logged in normally and is working. I have no idea what the trouble was all about, but it is over.

for future reference, if you have nvidia drivers installed, you must reinstall them any time you do a kernel or kernel-source update to let them recompile for the new kernel.

otis