Mouse not found; please click 'OK' to continue

[pne]

This morning, after waking up from suspend-to-RAM, my computer didn't recognise its mouse. I even get the "da-dum" sound of a USB device being disconnected, which I found suspicious (I initially thought that it might have been my printer, which could have been on when I sent the PC to sleep, but was probably my mouse).

Annoying. Especially since this was a chronic problem on Stella's PC and not one I wanted mine to develop. And also because the last time this had happened to me, I had also had the Sims open, and I couldn't figure out how to shut it down cleanly without a mouse. I mean, I can get to the "Exit" button all right, but then it asks me to confirm whether I really want to quit, and I can't dismiss that dialog with the keyboard! Neither Enter, Tab, nor the arrow keys seem to work.

So I crawled behind my PC and put my mouse in a different USB slot. Da-dum, my mouse's LED is shining again. Unplug it and put it back in the original slot, mouse LED is off. WTF? Ah well, plug it into the "new" slot since at least it works there.

(And no annoying "Ooh! New device! Wanna give me an install CD with drivers?", either, thank goodness.)