Mouse & Keyboard randomly uninstall/reinstall????

[TheGhengisKhan]

Ok, I've got a strange problem here for all you tech guru's that troll the forums here...

My mouse and keyboard will both randomly uninstall then reinstall themselves. It doesn't matter what I'm doing, gaming, surfing, or scrolling through my registry... The main problem is that sometimes they just uninstall, and stop working alltogether, and one of those little yellow text boxes pop up from my taskbar saying something along the lines of "USB device error: a USB device has stopped responding" and I literally have to hit the reset button on my case if I want to go back to doing anything.
The strange thing is that it doesn't matter if I've got them plugged into my USB ports or if I've got them plugged into the PS2 ports (with adapters)

my current setup:
FIC AN19C v1.0 mobo
XP2000+ Tbred A cpu (currently back to stock speeds for troubleshooting, doesn't help)
Radeon 9000pro 128Mb vid card
Audigy X-gamer sound card
Linksys 10/100 Ethernet card
ATI value TV capture card
Intellipoint optical USB mouse
MS Office USB keyboard
WinXPpro SP1
(did I miss anything important?)

[KaHNZa]

Try cleaning the USB connectors. They might be dirty. Or it could be that there are some broken wires somewhere.

[ptwearnhardtfan]

How about updating USB drivers or chipset drivers.

[TheGhengisKhan]

All drivers on everything on my PC are up to date, I've checked for loose wires, but one thing I forgot to mention was that when they uninstall, both do it at the same time. Then when I unplug them I get the windows uninstall noise, and "sometimes" when I plug them back in I will get the windows install noise.

did that make sense?

[KaHNZa]

is it maybe a virus?

[TheGhengisKhan]

I've run Norton's a couple times since this started, and made sure everything there was up to date as well.

[Paradoxmaker]

My wifes computer sits next to mine and she has the same problem. When ever I switch on my 120v cooling fan for my computer her mouse just turns off and reinstalls. when I turn off the fan it does the same thing. It only happens to her USB mouse though, her keyboard is regular old PS2 so it is not affected.
TheGhengisKhan do you have any higher voltage devices next to your computer that may be switching on and off. It seems to me it may either be power surging (don't know about this as both of our computers are on UPS's) or EM interferance from something else.

[phpguru]

Reinstall Windows. It fixes 99% of problems.

phpguru

[TheGhengisKhan]

It might be the EMI thing, I'll try re-running some of the wires and see what happens. I can't reinstall windows untill after payday and I can pick up a Disk Dr. to get rid of the scratches on my Windows CD.

Thanks for the suggestions.

[TheGhengisKhan]

re-running the wires didn't help, I'll try reinstalling windows after I pick up a Disk Dr. on Friday.
Wish me luck.

[TheGhengisKhan]

well, no reinstall of windows needed (yet).

I disabled the on-chip USB in my bios and now they work great (pluged into the PS2 ports) haven't tried the USB ports yet, but I'm pretty sure they probably won't work, so I'll have to look into it.