USB mouse randomly dead on boot. Repluging it makes it work!

English Hardware
1

Hello list, moderators! This may be some kind of computer USB HW problem not related to the mouse, but maybe it’s something simple like a BIOS setting.

This HW is an old HP Pentium4 tower with a dual boot XP and openSuse 12.1 with LXDE. Both XP and 12.1 experience this random USB mouseless bootup. I have tried changing the BIOS legacy USB and PS2 mouse settings to no avail. Also I have similar problems with different USB mice.

On the 12.1 I can replug the USB mouse connector and all is forgiven if the system boots up mousless. There is no external USB hub involved, just direct connections into the motherboard.

My 12.1 is up to date. The USB mice are old like the tower. One mouse is an HP. The other is a Logitec. I have another P4 system here with 12.1 and XP dual boot and USB mouse that never fails.

The picture in my head is that randomly the USB mouse isn’t recognized by the driver until it’s hot plugged. It’s similar to a thumb drive being mounted if it’s plugged in prior to boot, but only a thumb hot plug will cause the pop-up menu.

This isn’t a serious problem as I have a workaround, but I would surely appreciate some suggestions to fix this.

Any ideas? Heboland

2

On 11/22/2012 03:16 AM, heboland wrote:
> Any ideas?

since it happens with multiple operating systems, it can’t be an OS
problem…

since it happens with multiple mice, it can’t be them…

so it must be a hardware problem with your “old HP Pentium4 tower”

could be an intermittent fault in most any circuit’s grounding…maybe
caused by a microscopic crack in the motherboard across a circuit run…

or about a thousand other things…

like, sometimes such a machine will have USB ports on the face of the
tower and others on the back–and, the ones on the back give NO troubles
at all, and all on the front suffer from an intermittent grounding
problem giving exactly the kinds of symptoms you describe…

if the back works great and the front does not, and if you are safe
with taking the lid off your tower, and if you shut it down, and
unplug it from power, then: look closely and you will see a number of
small wires coming from the vicinity front panel of your tower and run
to the motherboard where they are plugged into a socket…carefully, at
the motherboard connection point just unplug and replug each…

sometimes those intermittent faults are caused by tiny amounts of
oxidation at the point of contact…and, just un- and re-plugging is
enough to clean away enough oxidation to allow a good connection…

otherwise, just continue doing as you have been (replug the mouse if it
is not seen–which leads me to say: if you always use a particular USB
port, try a different one…it may just be THAT port has an intermittent
hardware fault…)

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