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Keyboard, mouse and tablet stopped working on 3 machines.

We have 2 Power Mac's and a Mac Pro and all at the same time the keyboard, tablet and mouse stopped working on all 3 machines. We have all the machines in a server room and are using powered ethernet / usb extenders going through to screens etc.


The 3 machines are also connected by ethernet through a router. Is it possible that the router is failing and is causing the problem? Or is it out of the question. The only other way the machines are connected is with the power and through the UPS.


We've also changed out everything obvious.


Any ideas?


BK

Posted on Mar 4, 2015 1:03 AM

Reply
13 replies

Mar 4, 2015 9:36 AM in response to MichelPM

Thanks Michael. Yea we tried that and it made no difference, everything was still frozen. It's just really weird. I was thinking that it may have kicked off something internal, but really it should make no difference eh?


That leaves the UPS which looks like it's working properly - well the lights are all green 🙂 could it be some sort of interference with the power? which is weird as that's what the UPS is designed to stop. I suppose we could try taking that out of the loop and see what happens. Mind you there are 3 other machines on our system that are working fine - 3 work and 3 don't.

Mar 4, 2015 10:18 AM in response to brian jfromauckland

Hmmmm, are these things connected via USB to the individual Macs?


If your Firewire or USB isn't recognizing any device. A solution which has worked for some whose hard drive became invisible in 10.4 was simply to follow these four steps to reset the Firewire/USB bus:

1. Shut the machine down.

2. UNPLUG the power lead to the computer and any firewire/USB drive or devices.

3. leave it for 10 minutes.

4. Connect back up and reboot.

http://www.macmaps.com/firewirebug2.html

Mar 22, 2015 7:40 PM in response to brian jfromauckland

So just been doing a bit more testing on this issue and we had a powered hub as well as a powered USB extender and it was still causing issues. But when we unplugged the power supply to the hub, everything came right (fingers crossed). So I'm assuming that the extender and hub was getting to much power or something.

Mar 23, 2015 4:27 AM in response to brian jfromauckland

Well,

SInce you never made mention of a USB hub or USB extenders, then it was even more difficult to help you diagnose your Mac issues.

That was kinda important info that we needed to help you.

If the hub was powere's with a separate electrical power supply, plugged into an electrical outlet, then there is something in the hub that has failed and the USB devices connected to the hub are/were drawing too much power from the Mac, causing it to freeze.

Also, if some of these devices, connected up to the hub, were using USB extenders, then these devices were even drawing MORE power from the Mac to go the extra distances.

In any event, I believe the USB hub is no longer working properly causing all of the USB devices on the hub to draw way too much power from your Macs and causing them to freeze.

A powered hub should not be causing issues if the hub was fine before these issues, but now it isn't. The USB hub has some sort of issue.

Mar 23, 2015 1:15 PM in response to MichelPM

Story of my life - always forgetting the important bits 🙂 Although I did mention the USB extenders, but failed on the hub $%*&.


So where, I'm at now (I went into the office last night and spent an hour or so on this) is that I'm just working on the Mac Pro, It has a powered USB extender over ethernet, going through to a powered hub, which then goes to a mouse, keyboard and tablet.


What happens now is that it will work OK with one device plugged in, but when you plug another in, neither works. So I thought maybe it was getting too much power and unplugged the power to the extender.


This seemed to work, but for some weird reason if you say unplug the mouse and replug it in, it all stops working. So then you unplug the power to the hub and it will start working with no power going to anything. Plug the power back into the hub and it stops working.


I tried 5 different hubs and the same thing happens with all of them. I also exchanged the extender boxes out as well.


Bottom line is it's working and we know how to get it to work, but I'd really like to understand what's going on. I was wondering if it had something to do with the MacPro allotting power to it and then not being able to deal with any change?


They don't seem to be very flash hubs and extenders and I wondered if there were ones that regulated the power supply better?


Thanks heaps for jumping in MichelPM

Keyboard, mouse and tablet stopped working on 3 machines.

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