Why do my mice keep disconnecting from their usb ports?

February 21, 2006 6:37 PM

My MS mouse will spontaneously fail, while in use. The USB plug claims that it has been unplugged, and the laser light turns off until it is plugged back in, and sometimes not even then.

About six months ago, my MS Optical USB Intellimouse started arbitrarily failing. In use or not, its light would turn off, the XP USB disconnect noise would happen, and it would stop responding. Plugging it back into both the same port and other ports may or may not fixing it, un/plugging it back in would eventually get it working, in 5-30 seconds. At times, if left plugged in, it might decide to work again, and then make the USB connection noise; it may or may not then un/replug itself back in six or ten times, until it made a final dun-adundundundundun noise, and would absolutely have to be fiddled with to get it working again. It got worse as time went on, eventually disconnecting itself as frequently as every thirty seconds.

I traded mice with my roommate; in his iMac, it would do the same thing. Seemingly indicative of the mouse. Now, however, the mouse I traded him for has been doing the same thing, an MS Optical USB Wheel Mouse. I have 6 USB 1/1.1/2.0 ports, and switching which it's plugged into doesn't seem to make a difference. The newer mouse is still doing it infrequently, but the fact that both do it now, on multiple computers, indicates that there's either a natural lifespan that I'm not aware of, or that my computer is killing the mice. Any ideas what could be causing this, or just how to fix it?

posted by duende to computers & internet (7 comments total)

One reason that USB devices "disconnect" without actually pulling the plug is "over-current protection", which you can think of as a sort of self-resetting fuse.

That being said, I don't know of a reason that a mouse would "wear out" to the point that it would trigger the over-current protection with any kind of regularity.

There's probably no way for Windows XP to know whether the disconnect was due to over-current protection or some other reason.
posted by jepler at 7:45 PM on February 21, 2006

If there is something about my computer that is causing this to occur, are the effected mice salvagable? Is it better to just get a new one, and if so, how can I prevent this from happening again?
posted by duende at 8:04 PM on February 21, 2006

Do you have the ps/2 adapter for the MS mouse? Maybe try using that?

Are the USB ports on the motherboard or seperate along the card slots? If they're along the card slots, maybe check their connection to the motherboard USB connectors? It sounds like you've tried both though, if you've got six USB ports.

Does anyone have a USB PCI card you can borrow?
posted by ODiV at 9:20 PM on February 21, 2006

I had a Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer that had the same problem. The wire for the mouse is probably broken inside the insulation of the cord. Mine broke right at the point it entered the mouse.

If you have a soldering iron or electrical tape and a desire to strip a lot of really tiny wires, it's pretty easy to fix. Open the mouse up, cut the faulty section of the cable out and reattach it to the connector in the mouse. Fitting your new bundly mess inside the mouse might be harder with the smaller model. It took me around 20 minutes or so.

Might be worth just getting a new one.
posted by easyasy3k at 10:04 PM on February 21, 2006

You know what's weird... I have this exact same problem with my MS mouse. it only happens when my phone goes off! color me confused. I like jepler's explanation about over-current though.
posted by menace303 at 10:08 PM on February 21, 2006

Easyasy3k looks to be right, as illustrated pretty well by here.

Unfortunately, after trying this, I think I just killed it even more permanently than it already was. For anyone curious, the setup of the mouse is as follows: the usb cord terminates with five wires, with silver connectors plugged into a housing that keeps the five copper wires in contact with pins on the board.

The housing doesn't look as though it's intended to be messed with much, and the connectors are difficult to dig out of the housing. We investigated these, but proceeded to plug the wires in backwards. While the wires weren't designed to be extracted once, they really weren't designed to be extracted twice. They're very loose now, and I think we're going to try to solder them back into the housing tomorrow.
posted by duende at 1:17 AM on February 22, 2006

I hope that you get it working again. I said I had a mouse because the same thing happened again and I didn't feel like fixing it another time. Now I use a wireless mouse that has survived many a fall/crash/pounding.
posted by easyasy3k at 11:30 AM on February 22, 2006