An Obscure Mouse Freeze Caused by USB, and How to Fix It

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Let me say first that this might be unique, or almost unique, depending on your flavor of Linux and your hardware.

The Issue

I don't know exactly how or when this problem began, but I do know that I used Ubuntu exclusively as my OS for a good seven years (and same machine for five years) before the problem reared its ugly head. "The Problem" was that all of a sudden my mouse would "freeze," meaning the cursor of my wireless mouse froze and could not be moved—nor could I click on anything on the screen--without removing the mouse dongle from the USB port, then reinserting it. Unfortunately, though that "fix-that-is-not-a-fix" worked, it only worked for a few minutes. Try as I could to reprise any changes to my computer, software or habits that might have caused the problem, nothing I thought to try or change worked.

Worthless Forums

Okay, so I did find a clue as to my problem on one of the forums, but it was an obscure clue on an obscure forum, and that after many hours of failing to find any comprehensible suggestion, so I will stick by my mantra of "worthless forums," as 98 percent of them deserve that moniker.

Discovery

The clue came from someone with the same obscure problem and who also had tried to find an answer in the forums before he decided to do some independent research. Hooray for the "ordinary" user who is better at finding solutions than 90 percent of the programmer types who take up 90 percent of the space with useless and incomprehensible (to the average home user) answers and guesses.

Pinpointing the Real Problem

Turns out that there is some sort of weird magnetic field anomaly (my words, because it's been a while and I don't recall the exact words the poster used) that causes a problem when some attached USB devices (keyboards, mouses, etc) operate on a different frequency than others, primarily when, like I do, you have a mix of built-in USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 ports. So, for instance, as in my case—I have two USB 2.0 and two USB 3.0 ports on the front of my machine--when you plug in a PassPort device to a USB 3.0 port, then you plug your mouse dongle into the other USB 3.0 port, the anomaly occurs and the signals from those two devices do not play well together, thus it causes your mouse to freeze.

The Fix

I make sure that both my mouse dongle and my PassPort device are never plugged into the same version of the USB ports (both plugged into 3.0 or 2.0). My PassPort device is plugged into a 3.0 port, as it benefits from the speed advantages. My mouse dongle is plugged into a 2.0 port.

The Proof

Occasionally, I un-mount my Passport for various reasons. If I forget or am just now careful when I re-mount the PassPort and I plug it into a 2.0 port, same as my mouse, the mouse cursor freezes. When I switch the Passport plug-in to a 3.0 port, problem solved.