nVidia Display Driver Prevents USB Wake Up

I didn’t know that a video display driver could prevent my USB mouse and keyboard from waking up after the computer has been sleeping… but it is true.

After installing the new July 2009 version of the nVidia GeForce 7900 GS display driver, when I turned on my Vista 64-bit machine after it had been sleeping, the windows logon screen would display and then quickly flick black a couple of times. And then… then the mouse and keyboard did not even have power from the USB.

Not a very funny joke nVidia.

Sleep in Windows Vista No Longer Works After Installing Logitech Software

After installing my new Logitech MX400 mouse, I was surprised to find that Windows Vista no longer goes to sleep.

More specifically, after I press the sleep button and after the machine does all the normal preparations for sleep, at the point when it would normally doze off, it immediately wakes up.

Having come across this issue in the recent past after installing my Logitech keyboard (before this blog started), I recalled the solution.

The problem lies with in Power Management settings of the device driver.

Start Computer Management, select “Device Manger”, expand “Mice and other pointing devices”, right click on the mouse driver, select “Properties”, choose the “Power Management” tab, and then uncheck the checkbox labelled “Allow the device to wake the computer”.

I immediately tried the sleep button again, and to my surprise the computer woke up again!

It seems that when I installed the Logitech SetPoint software and drivers from the installation disk of the mouse, the software apparently reinstalled or modified the settings of my Logitech keyboard driver and also reset those Power Management settings.

I don’t appreciate software that makes those kind of changes without informing me. Dear Logitech, please change your installation program so that it actually asks me what power management settings I would like instead of assuming.

Aside from that, I am happy with the keyboard and mouse.

A Tribute To My Mice

In a curious set of recent events, my old optical Microsoft IntelliMouse decided to give me double-clicks instead of single-clicks. This mouse has served me well for many, many years and it has been a tough decision to let it go to mouse heaven.

Interestingly, I had a relatively unused Dell mouse that I received with my laptop a couple of years ago, and it too almost immediately started giving me double-clicks as well – even on a different computer (so no, it is not my mouse double-click settings in Windows).

So on the weekend I made my way down to the shops and handled a number of mice in order to see which mouse caught my fancy and felt the most comfortable.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Logitech MX400 mouse felt much more comfortable than all the other mice…

As expected, the mouse performs very well, but the only issue I have with the MX400 is that the Wheel Button takes a good amount of effort to press down.