On Tue, Mar 01, 2005 at 10:21:06PM -0500, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
> Two of my machines have USB mice.  On occasion, and without apparent 
> cause, the system will stop seeing any mouse events.

I have seen mice die that way.

In my case they were optical ones, so you could see if they were "powered" by
moving them (which should have made them light up). Everytime they stopped
sending mouse events, they were not powered any more. I've replaced the mice,
without looking further, and the problem went away. Probably some bad contact
of the usb cable, and I didn't feel like soldering (which I actually did for
the same problem happening to a MS freestyle pro gamepad, where I removed the
cable connector and instead soldered the cable directly on the pcb).

Martin