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In my ubuntu 12.04 system, I faced this problem many times that my mouse pointer get stuck to its position, doesn't move anywhere, all other things works fine except the pointer and I had to restart my system to fix this. How can I fix this so that next time I don't have to restart my system?

Rahul Singh
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  • plz add what hardware you have. What is the pointing device that you use, touchpad or a USB mouse? When does it get stuck, while does something specific or randomly anytime? – Bhavin Doshi Feb 03 '14 at 09:00
  • acer laptop,Intel Pentium P6200 processor, 2gb DDR3 RAM, and its touchpad. it happens sometime not randomely possibly bcoz of low RAM. – Rahul Singh Feb 03 '14 at 09:25
  • does it happen when some particular program is open, or happens even when there are no programs running? when the pointer gets stuck, if you do top in a terminal, is any process consuming a lot of cpu? – Bhavin Doshi Feb 03 '14 at 15:53
  • ya i think u are right..bcoz it happens when i opened lot of apps in my system,suddenly system get hanged for only few seconds say 5-6secs after that my mouse pointer gets stuck..it doesn't happens each time but sometimes, possibly when m running out of memory.. – Rahul Singh Feb 03 '14 at 15:59

2 Answers2

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As per the comments in the question: this is the explanation:

When a lot of apps are opened, they would require more memory than the physical RAM of the system. This would prompt the system to use the swap partition, and write the "unrequired" data out on the swap (on disk). Now, if a lot of, or most of the apps are active, then the unrequired memory is very low, and in reality, the system keeps writing stuff to swap, takes it out and writes something else, and take it out again, and writes something else on swap. This would go on, and no real processing would happen. This situation would be indicated by a lot of disk activity (observable through iotop, or the constantly on LED for disk on the laptop).

The remedy for this is to get bigger RAM if you really want to use so many apps in general. Otherwise just be aware that hardware has some limitations and open just lesser number of apps in the system simultaneously.

If you must use so many apps at once, then try a lightweight ubuntu edition like Lubuntu or Xubuntu.

This answer is open ended, with a possibility of a google search for "techniques to reduce memory consumption of ubuntu".

Bhavin Doshi
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  • ok..thanks for such a usefull information...and i have found another article with same problem http://askubuntu.com/questions/128265/mouse-pointer-touchpad-getting-stuck-often-in-12-04?rq=1 , where i found to use (ctrl+alt+f2 and then ctrl+alt+f7) as a solution, so m waiting for my mouse to get stuck again... – Rahul Singh Feb 04 '14 at 05:28
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I found that answer given here https://askubuntu.com/a/184852/239257 works for me.

Step 1. CTRL+ALT+F2

Step 2. CTRL+ALT+F7

and problem solved!

Community
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Rahul Singh
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