I am trying to test using the latest version of Ubuntu on my laptop before installing. I have a USB thumb drive with Ubuntu 18.10. The system boots fine and loads to the desktop. After the desktop loads, the keyboard and trackpad on my laptop work briefly but become unresponsive after 3-5 seconds. I am unable to obtain any logs, check dmesg, or do anything really before they stop responding. My laptop has a touch screen as well and I can tell that the system has not completely hung up as I can get the cursor to move by touching the display, though it will not actually "click" when I do this, just relocate the cursor on the screen. I'm not sure what I can do to troubleshoot this as the keyboard and trackpad won't allow any input at all. I am hesitant to attempt a full install of the OS when I can't get the live version to work. I was able to install previous versions successfully, though sometimes had configuration challenges to get things working, especially when the laptop was brand new. I have tried googling the issue and it seems to be a common problem dating back multiple versions of Ubuntu, though there are varied "solutions", most of which involve a full blown install where you can tweak settings and reboot (though not sure how to tweak settings when the keyboard and trackpad don't work and when it is a live session that gets wiped out when the system shutsdown).

Laptop: Razer Blade 14" (2016 Blade v4), GTX 970M graphics card, i7–6700HQ