I installed Ubuntu 11.10 on my Sony Vaio a month ago. Since then everything was ok but recently my mouse stops responding occasionally.
What could be the problem and how would I fix it?
I can get the mouse working again by opening a terminal and running sudo rmmod psmouse && sudo modprobe psmouse
Sometimes my USB mouse get stuck too, but I realized that it occours when I accidentally hit the touchpad, activating some eternal Drag & (don't) Drop.
So here is a "quick dirty fix" that always works for me: just hit the touchpad again or the touchpad left button. Then, your USB mouse will get unstuck :)
You could wan't to disable the touchpad also, if you use the USB mouse more often.
dmesg | grep mouse
output, I get "psmouse.c: bad data from KBC - timeout"