12.04 keyboard stops working until you click in a new app then back

[jwerst]

I've been trying to find anyone else with this problem, but it's kind of hard to get it to show up in searches

On both my work and home computers, since I moved to 12.04 when I'm using an application or typing in a web browser or whatever, input will totally stop from the keyboard. If I click into a different window and back, everything works again. If I don't click with the mouse, it doesn't seem like it ever comes back. I think other stuff like alt+tab works when it happens, but I'd have to actually check next time it happens, and I don't know if tab focus changing from window to window makes it start working again. I want to say it doesn't work.

This happens multiple times a day, when I'm coding it shows up more often because I'm typing more.

It doesn't seem to happen in all apps. My web browsers, gedit, smplayer, nautilus will all lose focus. But Netbeans and terminal never do. I don't think that VirtualBox does, either.

Both home and work computers are pretty new Equus kind of generic boxes, but the keyboard and mouse are some 7-8 year old Microsoft Wireless Comfort Desktop stuff. I don't really have any hard keyboards to test with, but it could certainly be from them. I don't think that it's physical hardware issues, though, because both computers are using different versions of the keyboards, and neither keyboard had issues before the upgrade.

My HP laptop does a similar thing, but that appears to happen in any app and is a bit different. There the keyboard will stop every few seconds, but come back without changing focus or touching the touch pad. I think that might be hardware related, but I really don't know.

Does anyone have any advice as to where I can start looking to see what's going on? I'm pretty comfortable with the command line, but much more of a web developer than a linux guru. Maybe someone else has posted this and I just didn't see it in the forums?

I did notice that changing the keyboard to not allow repeating characters after seeing that as an issue searching for keyboard issues here seems to have helped with it not happening the whole time I've been working on this, but that could totally be a fluke.

Thanks for any help!

[jwerst]

It happened again - it seems like alt+tab still works and I can use that to switch focus and return, but still, I'd like to know what is actually causing it so I don't need to change the focus manually back all the time.

This is seriously making me think that I can't use Ubuntu any more. I like it, but it doesn't seem to really work right.

One thing that is worth noting is that I often do windows that are stuck to always be on top and also roll up those windows. Maybe that has something to do with it?

[jwerst]

Nobody?

[rv2221]

I've been having a similar problem that just started a few days ago so I am thinking it is related to a recent update. My symptom is that at some random point which could be hours after booting the machine the keyboard will become unresponsive. The machine is an HP Pavilion dv6000 laptop running Xfce Xubuntu 12.04.2. I get no cursor in the terminal window. The right click feature of the mouse will not work but left click will work on about half the things I click on. Changing the mouse or plugging in and external USB keyboard does not change anything. The only thing I can do is close open apps with the X in the corner of the app and then hard reboot by holding the power button. After it comes back on it is fine again for the next 1/2 hour to 3 hours. I can't seem to notice anything that invokes the problem, it seems totally random. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you!
rv2221

[jwerst]

That doesn't really sound like what I've been getting. My mouse never stops working, and changing focus away and back to the application always fixes it. The application itself is never totally unresponsive, and it never requires a reboot to fix. I've also been having issues since I first upgraded a few months after 12.04 was released.

[rv2221]

That doesn't really sound like what I've been getting.

OK, understood.

I am now booted into the previous kernel and have not seen the problem again (read..."yet"). To boot into a previous kernel hold the shift key down while rebooting and you should get a menu or previous kernels to arrow through.

rv2221

[jwerst]

I'm not sure if that would help, since it's happened with every kernel since I installed 12.04 several months ago. When

The laptop keyboard worked fine once I installed windows, but there were other issues with windows. Still, shows that the hardware isn't the issue, it's something with the Ubuntu OS.

[rv2221]

So using an older kernel didn't keep it fixed for me but I was able to work around the issue by ssh-ing into my laptop from another machine and using the command 'sudo service udev restart'. Of course you need to have sshd running before the problem arises but for now I can get around my issue.

[funskey]

I just now created a login on this site for this specific purpose. I have been facing this problem since the time I upgraded from 11 to 12. So like rv2221 says its been more than 6-7 of months. I too am unable to use my mouse right click and sometimes even my keyboard stops functioning when I boot up the machine. This problem has started to really get on my nerves now, and i can no longer work around the issue like I have been doing by simply restarting my machine. I am on the latest kernel and other than the last used kernel I tend to delete all to avoid redundancy. Besides I wouldn't want to use a year old kernel and also i don't think this is a kernel issue but more a ubuntu issue, specifically 12.04 + issue. Any help trying to solve this would be greatly appreciated.
One more thing I am proficient with linux but am no expert.

[driv]

Hi,

I'm having the exact same problem, I still cannot understand in what is causing it, but suddenly, the keyboard stops working and no window is focused. It's started 2 days ago, after a reeboot. After I click anywherer, everything starts working again.

If anyone has been able to resolve this I would really appreciate any help!

Thanks!