I am experiencing with increased frequency the loss of the mouse pointer, making it necessary to reboot to fix. The mouse itself is functioning ie I can move it on the desk and there is corresponding highlighting of application buttons as the invisible pointer moves over them, I have the ability to click on things, it's just that I can't actually "see" where it is pointing.
This may be a symptom of a wider problem - as yet undetermined. At times I experience a total freeze of the machine which requires a reset, it seems to most often co-incide with a screen redraw indicating either a video driver issue or hardware problem. The cursor I am currently typing next to as I compose this email isn't properly rendered either, it appears more like a dashed/dotted line rather than a solid vertical line. All other aspects of the display appear normal - running applications, the "task bar" and clock area etc all look good. I can boot to windows fine and the machine will run without any issue, so I'm inclined to believe it is driver related rather than hardware, and not faulty ram? However I'm not particularly sure on this. So my questions are how or where best to look for what the issue(s) may be? Having looked through var/log/messages I'm no wiser. (clutching straws now, he types...) Mouse driver reinstall? How? I have the NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8174-pkg1.run video driver. sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8174-pkg1.run -q gives me "Error: you appear to be running an X server: please exit X before installing". indicating to you all I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing! Any pointers much appreciated - I'm stuck... Possibly related (this has become quite a mess!) I may be looking at a significant hardware failure and this is complicating and confusing things. The hardware is all quite new - however... powering on has become problematic and I'm not clear if it is a power supply or motherboard issue. Symptoms here are the beginning of powering on, dvd drive lights up, hard drive light may flicker but power light doesn't come on and won't get as far as a POST test. Therefore dodgy power supply or insufficient power getting around the motherboard somewhere. Once it does get to the POST test (on resetting), all is fine.
