USB Mouse and/or DVI monitor fail when waking from Sleep

I have a Mac Mini and a Macbook which are both running OS X 10.6.5. Both have been having a bizarre problem ever since I bought them, at which time they had 10.5 pre-installed.

Intermittently, whenever I wake either computer from sleep, the mouse will not be working. I am using Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical USB on both machines. Sometimes after waking the mouse works fine, other times it is not responding and I fix the problem by simply unplugging it and plugging it back in. A simple fix, granted, but a real nuisance.

A similar problem occurs only with my Mac Mini -- intermittently upon waking I will get "snow" on the screen instead of a picture. It looks just like the "snow" you would get on an old analog TV set that was not tuned in to any station. Again, the simple solution is to unplug the cable and plug it back in. In this case, it's a mini-DVI to DVI adapter between the Mac Mini and the monitor. I am worried that the constant unplugging and plugging-back-in of this cable may eventually wear down the connector on the computer itself and necessitate a costly repair.

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.

[trevor]

Quote: Intermittently, whenever I wake either computer from sleep, the mouse will not be working. I am using Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical USB on both machines. Sometimes after waking the mouse works fine, other times it is not responding and I fix the problem by simply unplugging it and plugging it back in. A simple fix, granted, but a real nuisance.

I take it that you have installed a third-party driver for this mouse? I suspect that the driver is the problem. You can either uninstall that driver and use the class driver (which may lose you some customizability, depending on which driver you have installed) or try an alternate driver such as USB Overdrive or Steermouse.

Quote: A similar problem occurs only with my Mac Mini -- intermittently upon waking I will get "snow" on the screen instead of a picture. It looks just like the "snow" you would get on an old analog TV set that was not tuned in to any station. Again, the simple solution is to unplug the cable and plug it back in. In this case, it's a mini-DVI to DVI adapter between the Mac Mini and the monitor. I am worried that the constant unplugging and plugging-back-in of this cable may eventually wear down the connector on the computer itself and necessitate a costly repair.

This sounds more serious. Does this happen with a different monitor as well? If it is still under warranty, you may want to take your Mac Mini in to be looked at by a Mac Genius.

Trevor