VX Revolution – Stops working after 5 seconds, won’t wake up

I used to love the Logitech VX Revolution – really I did. But I am about to smash it. From what I can figure out from reading the forums and talking to their tech support it seems the mouse has some sort of problem staying awake.

Symptom: The VX will stop waking up after sleeping. It seem like the mouse automatically goes to sleep after about 5
seconds of no movement. It then will not wake up for me. The problem is intermittent, but seems to happen more when my computers memory starts getting full (manly from Firefox and Dreamweaver – both  are memory hogs). When it starts happening, I can sometimes shake the mouse and it will wake up, but soon even that stops working and I escalate to unplugging and replugging the receiver.  Eventually even that stops working and I  have to reboot.

I rebooted about and hour ago and it seems to be working fine now. But it has happened enough that  I’m going to go ahead and start this post about it. I will update it as I get more info and hopefully get to the bottom of this.

Possible causes:

• USB drivers – I am using a Thinkpad R50 with Windows XP and the latest drivers from IBM
• Video Card Drivers – Also the latest from IBM
• Interference from other 2.4 GHz sources – the receiver is now 3 inches from my mouse, my phones are 5.8 GHz, my cell is across the room. Could wifi cause it? Any one know how to debug interference?
• Conflict with some other program? Is there any thing I can install to watch the mouse more closely like a process explorer type tool?

I’ll keep you all updated – let me know if anyone else is having these problems…or has found the cure!

Update (12-3-2007): I must compliment Logitech Customer Service – after a long series of emails, then mailing back my broken mouse (at my expense), and then receiving a damaged mouse in return, they finally mailed me a new one which works great. Since they didn’t ask me to return the broken mouse they mailed me, I took it apart (the pads on the bottom are stickers that hide screws) I found a broken wire which leads to the battery. I soldered this back into place and got it to work. I have not been able to determine the original problem with the mouse loosing its connection after sleeping, and not reconnecting, but I am happy to report that is currently working flawlessly and is still my favorite mouse to date. I am starting to suspect some interference  which I do not have the correct equipment to detect.