No mouse with Knoppix 5.1.1 on Virtual PC 2007

[Uncle Stinky]

I'm having the same exact problem with my optical mouse. I have to (very slowly) pull the usb mouse cord out of the usb port that is located on the back of my computer, then, (very slowly) plug the cord back into the usb port that is located on the back of my computer. This way, the mouse cursor will move when I move the mouse instead of staying motionless in the middle of the screen after I boot up to Knoppix 5.1.1 desktop.

I do this slowly because I don't want to cause a spark between the usb port and the usb mouse cord connector. I have been told by competent technicians that we shouldn't connect or disconnect any electrical wires or hardware without first turning the computer off and disconnecting the power cord from the back of the computer's power source box.

I really would like to know why my optical mouse never initializes until I unplug it and then plug it back in after completely booting up to Knoppix 5.1.1?!!!

US

[Uncle Stinky]

I'm having the same exact problem with my optical mouse. I have to (very slowly) pull the usb mouse cord out of the usb port that is located on the back of my computer, then, (very slowly) plug the cord back into the usb port that is located on the back of my computer. This way, the mouse cursor will move when I move the mouse instead of staying motionless in the middle of the screen after I boot up to Knoppix 5.1.1 desktop.

I do this slowly because I don't want to cause a spark between the usb port and the usb mouse cord connector. I have been told by competent technicians that we shouldn't connect or disconnect any electrical wires or hardware without first turning the computer off and disconnecting the power cord from the back of the computer's power source box.

I really would like to know why my optical mouse never initializes until I unplug it and then plug it back in after completely booting up to Knoppix 5.1.1?!!!

US

[Harry Kuhman]

;....I do this slowly because I don't want to cause a spark between the usb port and the usb mouse cord connector. I have been told by competent technicians that we shouldn't connect or disconnect any electrical wires or hardware without first turning the computer off and disconnecting the power cord from the back of the computer's power source box.....

Electrical connections are either made or not made, how do you think that unplugging the connection very slowly matters? And on opening a connection with electricity flowing you may still get a spark. Actually you would be more likely to get a spark, but it would likely be over such a short distance that you might not notice it. And USB voltages are so low that noticeable sparking is extremely unlikely. More importantly though, USB is designed with the intention of "hot plugging", that is, it is intended by design to be plugged and unplugged while the computer is turned on. Any advice to not plug or unplug USB with the power on is bogus, to do it very slowly more so. Technicians who told you otherwise are not competent.

[Uncle Stinky]

;....I do this slowly because I don't want to cause a spark between the usb port and the usb mouse cord connector. I have been told by competent technicians that we shouldn't connect or disconnect any electrical wires or hardware without first turning the computer off and disconnecting the power cord from the back of the computer's power source box.....

Electrical connections are either made or not made, how do you think that unplugging the connection very slowly matters? And on opening a connection with electricity flowing you may still get a spark. Actually you would be more likely to get a spark, but it would likely be over such a short distance that you might not notice it. And USB voltages are so low that noticeable sparking is extremely unlikely. More importantly though, USB is designed with the intention of "hot plugging", that is, it is intended by design to be plugged and unplugged while the computer is turned on. Any advice to not plug or unplug USB with the power on is bogus, to do it very slowly more so. Technicians who told you otherwise are not competent.

Thanks, Harry, for the update on the very important "static spark" problems that will occur when we connect electrical wires and components to our computers without disconnecting the power cord from the back of the computer's case!!!

When you discover why our mice continually fail to initialize, I'd love to hear from you on that subject also, in addition to anything else that you may have to say on any subject. Without trying to flatter you, you seem to be very, very knowledgeable in this wonderland of Unix-Linux OS and computer technology in general (or overall). I'm sure that everyone appreciates your help and you can be certain that I do too!

Blessings

US

[Uncle Stinky]

Thanks, Harry, for the update on the very important "static spark" problems that will occur when we connect electrical wires and components to our computers without disconnecting the power cord from the back of the computer's case!!!

When you discover why our mice continually fail to initialize, I'd love to hear from you on that subject also, in addition to anything else that you may have to say on any subject. Without trying to flatter you, you seem to be very, very knowledgeable in this wonderland of Unix-Linux OS and computer technology in general (or overall). I'm sure that everyone appreciates your help and you can be certain that I do too!

Blessings

US

[Harry Kuhman]

A static spark, caused by a build up of static electricity, is a completely different animal. It is certainly to be avoided,and is particularly likely in times of low humidity (such as in a warm house in the winter).

But for more discussion of hot plugging and USB (and other technologies designed and intended to be hot plugged, such as PCMCIA and SCSI) see this article, or do a simple Google search.

Certainly with Knoppix, while you can plug in USB devices safely with the system powered up, you might not actually be able to use them if Knoppix didn't see them when it booted and did it's hardware detection, or if it doesn't have drivers for them. As to your mouse problem, I don't know the answer, it could be something as simple as a mouse with a broken intermittent wire in the tail. My only point in posting was to avoid any further proprigation of bad information about USB hot plugging.

[Uncle Stinky]

A static spark, caused by a build up of static electricity, is a completely different animal. It is certainly to be avoided,and is particularly likely in times of low humidity (such as in a warm house in the winter).

But for more discussion of hot plugging and USB (and other technologies designed and intended to be hot plugged, such as PCMCIA and SCSI) see this article, or do a simple Google search.

Certainly with Knoppix, while you can plug in USB devices safely with the system powered up, you might not actually be able to use them if Knoppix didn't see them when it booted and did it's hardware detection, or if it doesn't have drivers for them. As to your mouse problem, I don't know the answer, it could be something as simple as a mouse with a broken intermittent wire in the tail. My only point in posting was to avoid any further proprigation of bad information about USB hot plugging.

I was curious about this (apparently) worldwide problem with USB optical mice not initializing because it is so frequently seen in chat rooms and forums. Thanks, again, for your compassionate help with this matter.

US

[Harry Kuhman]

Actually, I don't see mice initialization problems here very frequently at all, unless they are some special mouse that needs drivers that Knoppix does not have (some wireless mice, mice on steroids that have grown extra buttons or trackballs, and so on). My expectation is always to expect Knoppix to detect a normal mouse as long as it is properly connected when Knoppix boots.

[Uncle Stinky]

Actually, I don't see mice initialization problems here very frequently at all, unless they are some special mouse that needs drivers that Knoppix does not have (some wireless mice, mice on steroids that have grown extra buttons or trackballs, and so on). My expectation is always to expect Knoppix to detect a normal mouse as long as it is properly connected when Knoppix boots.

It seemed like an epidemic here in Florida, USA, when I noticed this problem about optical mice on five different computers. Two of the computers used Micro$oft mice--the other computer used a Logitech brand--one of the computers used a Targus brand--and the final one used a Fellowes Ergo mouse. All of this happend in 2007. Perhaps we're feeling the undesirable effects of a strong solar storm down here in Tampa, Florida, and it's possibly vexing those sensitive optical devices. Five different people with exactly the same mouse problem on their five different motherboards raised a red flag and I thought that it merited some attention, whereas, those primitive roller ball mice have never exhibited such frustration to me. (And I can't remember ever having one of those fossils fail to initialize, except for one time, back in 1995, when I was desperately moved by despair while trying to install Windows 95 onto a nearly worn out hard drive with multiple corrupted sectors on it!)

Namaste

US

[Uncle Stinky]

the following is what the command "lspci -v" (without the quotation marks) produced when the Logitech Optical USB mouse failed to initialize on boot up. I do not see any other relevant information on this mouse, such as model number and etc. located on the bottom of it.

So, the command that is named lspci -v shows the following report;


00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE/PE DRAM Controller/Host-Hub Interface (rev 03)
Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. Unknown device 5770
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0
Memory at e8000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=64M]
Capabilities: <access denied>

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE Chipset Integrated Graphics Device (rev 03) (prog-if 00 [VGA])
Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. Unknown device 5778
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 16
Memory at e0000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=128M]
Memory at ee000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=512K]
Capabilities: <access denied>

00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. Unknown device 5770
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 16
I/O ports at d800 [size=32]

00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. Unknown device 5770
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 19
I/O ports at d000 [size=32]

00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. Unknown device 5770
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 18
I/O ports at d400 [size=32]

00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-M) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02) (prog-if 20 [EHCI])
Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. Unknown device 5770
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 23
Memory at ee080000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1K]
Capabilities: <access denied>

00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev 82) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0
Bus: primary=00, secondary=01, subordinate=01, sec-latency=32
I/O behind bridge: 0000c000-0000cfff
Memory behind bridge: ec000000-edffffff
Prefetchable memory behind bridge: 40000000-400fffff

00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL (ICH4/ICH4-L) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02)
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0

00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801DB (ICH4) IDE Controller (rev 02) (prog-if 8a [Master SecP PriP])
Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. Unknown device 5770
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 16
I/O ports at <unassigned>
I/O ports at <unassigned>
I/O ports at <unassigned>
I/O ports at <unassigned>
I/O ports at f000 [size=16]
Memory at 40100000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1K]

00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. Unknown device 5770
Flags: medium devsel, IRQ 17
I/O ports at 0500 [size=32]

00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 02)
Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. Unknown device 5771
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17
I/O ports at e000 [size=256]
I/O ports at e400 [size=64]
Memory at ee081000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=512]
Memory at ee082000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256]
Capabilities: <access denied>

01:09.0 Communication controller: Agere Systems V.92 56K WinModem (rev 03)
Subsystem: Agere Systems Unknown device 044c
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 21
Memory at ed001000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256]
I/O ports at c000 [size=8]
I/O ports at c400 [size=256]
Capabilities: <access denied>

01:0c.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. Unknown device 577c
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 23
I/O ports at c800 [size=256]
Memory at ed000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256]
[virtual] Expansion ROM at 40000000 [disabled] [size=64K]
Capabilities: <access denied>

And, I would love to hear from you about anything that you know from viewing this output from the command named lspci -v on this computer that has failed to recognize the optical mouse after booting up to the KDE desktop. (After copying and pasting this report in this post, I simply removed the USB cord from the back of the computer and then plugged it back into the same USB port and this caused the mouse to start to work.)