Since I got my KVM switch hooked up here at work today, my wireless mouse and keyboard seem unreliable, that is, occasionally a struck key will not register and I have to hit it 3 or 4 times, or a mouse click similarly will not register the first time. I have not ever noticed these devices behaving this way before.
This is happening on the original PC (I haven’t started using the other PC yet) and I know it is loaded with the correct software for these devices.
Is this a known phenomenon? Is there anything I can do to improve it?
Roddy
Hrm… How are they connected? No, wait… never mind. It really doesn’t matter much. Wireless keyboard/mouse combo’s generally have a USB ‘hub’ that they talk to, then the ‘hub’ talks to the computer. As part of the battery saving routines built in, they generally have to have a keep-alive signal going back and forth, which eventually has to hit the drivers in the PC.
It would be my guess, that the KVM switch is not passing the keep-alive traffic reliably, which is causing the mouse/keyboard to switch too often into the idle state, but that depends on the brand, and the software loaded on the PC.
In General, KVM switches are at the very least quirky with wireless, USB devices. I’ve even had issues with fully hard-wired KVM switches and extenders using USB, as they don’t always keep all of the target PCs (or even a single target PC) updated with the device alive status. For KVM switches, and even just extenders, I stick to the ol’ reliable PS2 connections.
Using KVM + wireless may be unreliable. Modern KVM switches assume a constant wired
connection between the KVM and the peripherals. Even then, KVM switches can be flaky.