I have a problem with USB mice not responding in Windows 7 occasionally. The mouse is connected to a USB hub inside a device which is then plugged into the computer. This is in a manufacturing test environment where we plug a device into the computer (one at a time), power the device up, test it (which includes using the device's mouse to move the cursor on the computer screen), disconnect it, and repeat (with a different mouse each time) – many times per day.
I have been able to replicate this problem; it seems to happen once every ~50-80 cycles. When the problem occurs the device mouse won't move the cursor, but the other USB functionality of the device still works. The regular computer mouse always works fine; the problem affects only the device's mouse.
I have verified in the Windows Device Manager that the mouse appears enumerated and doesn't show that it has any errors. The device mouse shows up as a "HID-compliant mouse" under "Mice and other pointing devices" along with the other "HID-compliant mouse" which is the test computer's regular mouse physically next to the keyboard.
When this condition happens, I can unplug the device, plug it back in again, and the mouse works and all appears to be fine. I can also disable the mouse by right clicking on it in the Device Manager, then enable it, and it works and appears to be fine.
Using a USB Beagle 480 analyzer I have logged USB traffic going between the device and test computer while testing these devices. The strange part is that even when the mouse is unresponsive it is still sending packets back to the computer.
This is a picture of some of the USB traffic while the mouse is unresponsive. It shows that packets are being sent back with X and Y position changes, but the cursor doesn't move on screen at all. (This is a screenshot from Total Phase Data Center software.)
So, it looks to me like Windows is receiving but ignoring the mouse input from that mouse for some reason. I'm at a loss over what could cause this. Any thoughts?
EDIT: Both the computer mouse and the device's mouse use what looks like just a generic HID mouse driver from Microsoft: version 6.1.7600.16385, dated 6/21/2006. We do updates on the computer, but that does seem old.
I did verify that when the unresponsive condition occurs the device manager still reports that this same driver is being used for the device's mouse and no errors are reported.
