USB problems

[Reinhold Rumberger]

On Monday 17 May 2010, Wulfy wrote:
> Since I have upgraded to Lucid I have been experiencing problems
> with my USB mouse.  It's an optical mouse and the light goes out
> at random intervals and the cursor locks out.  During these
> times, a 'lsusb' shows my hubs but neither the mouse or the
> printer (which is also a USB device). I've tried googling but my
> google-foo seems to have deserted me...
> 
> Has anyone else been having similar problems? Any fix?

Assuming neither the mouse nor the printer are wireless:
Are you sure you didn't recently drop the machine/hub or something? 
It sounds like a loose contact to me or alternatively a power issue 
with the hub...
Does the Hub's power supply smell strange? Does using a different hub 
help? Does connecting the hub to a different USB port on the machine 
help?

Personally, unless other people with a similar machine experience 
similar problems, I'd go for a hardware defect. You might want to 
check the output of dmesg and the contents of /var/log/messages to 
see what the kernel thinks is happening.

  --Reinhold