At some times my keyboard and mouse completely desert me. The previous sentence I think I have typed 4-5 times now because certain letters get lost.
When this happens, dmesg gives the following lines (over and over and over):

psmouse.c: TouchPad at isa0060/serio4/input0 lost synchronization, throwing 3 bytes away.
psmouse.c: TouchPad at isa0060/serio4/input0 lost sync at byte 1
psmouse.c: TouchPad at isa0060/serio4/input0 lost sync at byte 1
psmouse.c: TouchPad at isa0060/serio4/input0 lost sync at byte 1
psmouse.c: TouchPad at isa0060/serio4/input0 - driver resynched.

I have an HP NC4000 laptop running Slackware 10.2 with 2.6.13.2 kernel. The bug comes and goes, and the system either works perfectly, or is horrible to work on alltogether.

I have an external USB mouse (Microsoft Intellimouse explorer USB) that I normally use instead of the Synaptics touchpad. This bug also affects the keyboard as I am loosing letters and certain letters gets repeated all over the screen (as if the key got stuck)

lspci output:
00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS200/RS200M AGP Bridge [IGP 340M] (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc PCI Bridge [IGP 340M]
00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: ALi Corporation M5451 PCI AC-Link Controller Audio Device (rev 02)
00:07.0 ISA bridge: ALi Corporation M1533 PCI to ISA Bridge [Aladdin IV]
00:08.0 Modem: ALi Corporation M5457 AC'97 Modem Controller
00:09.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5212 802.11abg NIC (rev 01)
00:0b.0 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc. OZ711M1/MC1 4-in-1 MemoryCardBus Controller (rev 20)
00:0b.1 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc. OZ711M1/MC1 4-in-1 MemoryCardBus Controller (rev 20)
00:0b.2 System peripheral: O2 Micro, Inc. OZ711Mx 4-in-1 MemoryCardBus Accelerator
00:10.0 IDE interface: ALi Corporation M5229 IDE (rev c4)
00:11.0 Bridge: ALi Corporation M7101 Power Management Controller [PMU]
00:12.0 USB Controller: NEC Corporation USB (rev 43)
00:12.1 USB Controller: NEC Corporation USB (rev 43)
00:12.2 USB Controller: NEC Corporation USB 2.0 (rev 04)
00:13.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5705M Gigabit Ethernet (rev 01)
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon IGP 330M/340M/350M

lsusb gives among others
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 045e:001e Microsoft Corp. IntelliMouse Explorer:

lsmod gives:
Module Size Used by
radeon 76608 1
drm 59924 2 radeon
snd_pcm_oss 47904 0
snd_mixer_oss 17216 1 snd_pcm_oss
ati_agp 6732 1
snd_ali5451 21444 1
snd_ac97_codec 83260 1 snd_ali5451
snd_pcm 80264 3 snd_pcm_oss,snd_ali5451,snd_ac97_codec
snd_timer 20612 1 snd_pcm
snd 44900 8 snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_ali5451,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm,snd_timer
snd_page_alloc 8520 1 snd_pcm
tg3 96708 0
pcmcia 30544 4
yenta_socket 22604 4
rsrc_nonstatic 10240 1 yenta_socket
pcmcia_core 35664 3 pcmcia,yenta_socket,rsrc_nonstatic
agpgart 29576 2 drm,ati_agp

and the relevant section of my kernel .config :
#
# Input Device Drivers
#
CONFIG_INPUT_KEYBOARD=y
CONFIG_KEYBOARD_ATKBD=y
# CONFIG_KEYBOARD_SUNKBD is not set
# CONFIG_KEYBOARD_LKKBD is not set
# CONFIG_KEYBOARD_XTKBD is not set
# CONFIG_KEYBOARD_NEWTON is not set
CONFIG_INPUT_MOUSE=y
CONFIG_MOUSE_PS2=y
# CONFIG_MOUSE_SERIAL is not set
# CONFIG_MOUSE_VSXXXAA is not set
# CONFIG_INPUT_JOYSTICK is not set
# CONFIG_INPUT_TOUCHSCREEN is not set
# CONFIG_INPUT_MISC is not set

I've tried googling, but the hits are either relevant to much older kernels, or list similar problems but no solution. Thus I hope someone here has some input..

-Y1

Ever hear of a thing called kernel 2.4.x ?

Ofcourse I have heard of the 2.4 version tree.

What is the particular reason behind asking if I heard of 2.4.x ? I have searched but found no indication that this problem is not also part of 2.4. Have you experienced that downgrading to 2.4 helped yourself in the same way? I can't help but wonder why you posted this. Is this your idea of being helpful or an attempt at being funny?
Maybe degrading to 2.4 could be a solution to this particular problem, but then it'd be nice to know why it works in 2.4, where this is documented, and use that as a starting point for further research in order to both solve the problem and provide useful research to the developers (either through testing to find a bugfix or making the solution available in a FAQ.

The challenge(s) with 2.4 among others are that certain hardware isn't supported under 2.4, among them my laptop, causing the processor to shut down due to over heating.

Thus I am writing, hoping that someone helpful can point me in the right direction to shed some lighton whether this is caused by a kernel module bug, a misconfiguration on my end, or if there's other workarounds.

My advanced apologies if this seems like a harsh post, but while nobody has a right to hold any expectations of help or time from other volunteers at this forum, I do expect people to take other people's questions and troubles seriously when responding. And while I and many more with me encourage and welcome people to speculate, experiment and pass on not-always-the-best-advise, at least they have in common that they came from a genuine desire to find a solution to the poster's problem.

Thanks...

I didn't mean to be crass... it's just that you don't find any posts that say "bug comes and goes" and kernel-2.4.x in the same sentence!
Kernel 2.6 series is nowhere near stable, so you can expect to continue having problems for some time to come. Even if you work this out for your current kernel version, it may well be broken in the next.
Under 2.4 kernels i can have touchpad, usb mouse, serial mouse and ps/2 mouse working all at the same time, plus all the track-balls or whatever graphic tablets, etc.

Sounds like an acpi problem with the overheating... Yours sounds like a case where you could definitely benefit from what the 2.6 kernels potentially offer. Personally, I don't waste time on the 2.6 series until they get it shaped into a more stable condition. The thing is that new code is still being allowed in which breaks other already-working code -since there is no longer an 'unstable' development series.

It's okay if you are a whiz or really NEED what 2.6 has that 2.4 doesn't -but don't expect the next version to work out-of-box for you. If you do get what you have working, sit on it! I mean if you like USING your box. If you want to just be always working on it, fine -do that.

Sorry if I offended.

Hi again,

Thanks for the clarification No offence taken and with the expanded notes I clearly see where you're coming from.

My problem is that I need 2.6 for ACPI to function properly as it scales my frequency perfectly and also controls the fan. Thus 2.4 is no longer an option.

I was hoping to find someone who have found a way to contain this bug, or at least control it. In the very least I'd like to find somewhere proper to report it, without venturing too far into the lkml as they shouldn't need to be bothered with users such as myself with absolutely no abilities to read a line of C

Thanks again for your clarification

-Y1