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I have a usb Microsoft mouse that works fine on Windows, but on Ubuntu it stops working if I stop using it for three seconds (literally, I counted). At this point, I am unable to move it, I have to click, almost as if it wake the mouse up. And that sucks because apparently that click is a legit click and I end up closing out of stuff sometimes...

Anyway, please help if you've ran into this sort of problem before. I know that there's a chance that this is just an unsolvable hardware issue that I might just have to live with (or write a driver).

Thanks in advance for your time.

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    I have exactly the same problem. Never had it with previous Ubuntus or previous computers (same microsoft usb mouse). Did you find a solution at the end ?
    – rodrigob
    Mar 14, 2013 at 17:11
  • maybe some default values of variables changed in the kernel
    – thom
    Jun 25, 2013 at 17:32
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    What solved this problem in my case was executing this: for i in /sys/bus/usb/devices/*/power/control; do echo on > $i; done. You can find more information here: superuser.com/questions/408683/…
    – syntagma
    Jan 25, 2015 at 10:16

2 Answers 2

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Yes, I encountered this same problem (although in a different way).

In my case it was due to agressive powersaving on USB ports.
This was something I did (to) myself.

If you want to change this behaviour (which, I guess, you do), you could create a permanent settings file to force USB always on.
Open a root console and type (or copy/paste):

echo 'ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="usb", TEST=="power/control" ATTR{power/control}="on"' >/etc/udev/rules.d/usb_power_save.rules
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  • I installed the package laptop-mode-tools. I am wondering if that might be what causes the aggressive powersaving. It only happens when I am running on battery. Nov 6, 2016 at 3:57
  • What will be the impact on battery life? May 22, 2018 at 6:56
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For those of you using powertop: <TAB> to "Tunables" section and make sure "Autosuspend for USB device" or "Autosuspend for unknown USB device" is off ("Bad" on left).

I was using sudo powertop --auto-tune in /etc/rc.local, so I had to add this afterwards: for i in /sys/bus/usb/devices/*/power/control; do echo on > $i; done.

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