Recently, my computer has started making a noise that sounds like a USB device connecting and disconnecting.
I haven’t connected any new devices. All I have is a mouse, keyboard, and printer connected through USB.
I’m using Windows Vista. Any thoughts?
Why not go to sounds in Control PANEL and see what you have turned on?
Maybe your printer has a loose/bad USB cable. Any other USB devices, like a thumbdrive?
Something may be resetting the USB interface. You may have a frayed wire or something like that, or possibly the USB controller on the motherboard is starting to die. I had a problem like that on my computer, and the keyboard was clearly doing a reset while it happened (the numlock key would flash off and on). I ended up just unplugging all of the cables and plugging them in again to make sure I had a good connection and all was well.
If devices are drawing too much power, they may end up causing a reset as well. That’s probably not an issue if all you have is a keyboard mouse and printer, but it’s worth mentioning for anyone else who comes searching into this thread. Again, a frayed cable could be causing a small short which could be drawing enough current to cause the reset, but not enough of a short to actually fail.
You could also theoretically have a virus or some piece of malware probing your system and causing the reset.
A corrupted drive could theoretically cause it as well. You may want to update your printer driver.
The mouse on my computer has been doing this lately. The pointer will stop moving on the screen, the USB “disconnect” will sound and then, seconds later, the USB “connect” will sound and it will beging working again.
I think my mouse is just old and tired. (Yes, I checked the cable.)
I have a mouse that did this before it went even worse. Turns out it had a short. Now, it will crash the mouse driver if you plug it in. As in, after removing it, even plugging in another mouse will not work until you restart the computer.