LXDE 2010.10 and USB Wifi. Desktop changes itself, titlebars gone.

[BJF]

My laptop. It's doing peculiar things again. And I'm sure there is a logical explanation for it.
It's that HP NX9005, which does not have inbuilt Wifi. I have used a generic Atheros AR5523 usb dongle with complete success for years instead and ran a ndiswrapper extracted from a Windows installer with 2007 and 2009 KDE. Getting it to work with LXDE 2010 turned out to be a breeze as there is a native driver in Configure>. But there is this problem that has occurred twice now about which I enquire.

If the computer boots up without the dongle in a port it behaves normally. With only two usb ports I sometimes must. The next time it is booted even with the dongle back in place the desktop and its theme is changed all on its own and the cursor is permanently "busy" and never settles to a pointer. It will still open app's but the title bar is missing from above the menus and the app does not appear in the taskbar so closing out of the app is impossible. The dongle connects still, as though nothing had happened, but of course the browser doesn't work properly with bits missing from the top. If I uninstall the dongle and reboot it no longer lights up but the mania remains. So too if I reinstall it, even though the dongle reconnects.

The last time this happened I was unable to get council from the Wise Ones on the Forum, and chose to reinstall LXDE. Something gets overwritten in the process and all is well again until I remove the dongle from the port of the new install. Obviously the charm of a complete reinstall if the dongle gets dislodged or removed is small, so I was seeking direction as to where to look for the wifi file that might keep the processor busy looking for the dongle and get corrupted if it is removed. Is there such a thing?

Thank you.

(EDIT) Additional information that might help: The dongle doesn't install "cleanly", in so much as it pops up a device not found error but lights up and works with the athfmwdl wrapper. And the cursor settles as soon as I open Configure>New Connection>Wifi, without proceeding further. And computing is again possible. The application windows remain minus their tops however, and a reboot returns to the busy cursor, but the Desktop keeps its pre-chosen settings.

[BJF]

Update: After seeking advice, exploring Openbox settings, and invoking LXTask for clues, I have thrown my hand in and reinstalled. LXTask was a revelation with 2%-5% CPU usage indicated running the Task and the cursor whirring away madly. Then CPU suddenly jumped to 100% for no visible reason and the machine took 10 hours to not quite shut down. The reinstall is completely normal again, the dongle that causes all the fuss installed cleanly this time, and all is well. Next on the list is a full update and restoration of the goodies the previous install enjoyed. And I promise NEVER to boot the machine up without that dongle in place ever again!    

[rogan]

I've had similar problem twice in the last week or so. My laptop is Asus W7J and I multiboot WinXP and four other Linux distros on it. One of the distros is PCLOS 2010.10 LXDE Mini and it is exclusively used for playing Urban Terror online.

Last week, after playing online, I did a reboot and lost title bars on applications and the mouse pointer was always busy (wristwatch). My desktop theme changed too. After unsuccessfully trying to restore desktop to its previous glory I gave up and reinstalled. Everything was OK until yesterday, when I got the same problem. This time, I remember, I played the game with a new USB mouse, then after going offline changed to my original USB mouse. After reboot the mouse pointer was always busy, I lost title bars and my desktop theme changed. Shortcut <Alt> + <F2> for run command stopped working too.

Instead of reinstalling LXDE I installed IceWM-light from repos and so far it behaves as it should. It even saved me some resources for gaming.

Hopefully this extra information would help in solving the problem. So far the common thing seems to be USB. I'd suggest to add "Lost title bar" to the subject line as more users may have a similar problem.
 

[BJF]

Hmmm. I wish I could be of more help. My issues are entirely around that "altered state" of the USB which won't allow the absence of the dongle, but I have a generic mouse that I will get out and try. LXDE on the laptop is a fairly new experiment and I'm not sure that I have actually gone beyond the scratch pad so far. What will be difficult will be to isolate whatever it is in our two (so far) experiences that is common and feed it back to the grown-up's to hopefully find a solution.
I will modify the title of the thread as suggested. Thanks for your input, Rogan.

[BJF]

I'm not happy. Not at all. My Asus netbook has just been updated, well two days ago it was, and has now gone loopy just like the laptop did. The cursor's going full time and the titlebars are absent. I find that the theme resets to the basic Gnome and Clearlooks is greyed until it is clicked. I can make the desktop go back but I can't change the cursor activity or the titlebar absence. This pee's me off on several fronts. I updated pretty much all our machinery at the same time, and now face the possibility that all three laptops and a desktop running LXDE might succumb at any time. The netbook is really annoying since it has its OS on an SD which took some effort, and has been stone reliable for around six months.
On this basis I have decided that I can no longer risk rolling updates. I will just reinstall at at six or twelve month intervals and have a shopping list of app's ready.

I'm off down the garden to eat worms now!!