Question : Problem: External USB Mice & Keyboard Freeze Up, No fix till reboot

I am running Windows Vista Ultimate x64 (just upgraded via clean install from XP Pro x86).

All my USB HIDs (HP Wireless Internet Keyboard & Mouse, also Wacom CTE-440 Graphics Tablet) stop working after a few hours of use. Unplugging & Replugging in doesn't fix, but reboot does for a few hours. Can't figure it out. How can I stop the freezing up?

Answer : Problem: External USB Mice & Keyboard Freeze Up, No fix till reboot

What if it's the drivers for your laptop's USB controller? The drivers could be screwing up how much power goes to the controller when devices are plugged in and cause them to either overheat after a while--assuming it's sending too much. It's possible that it's not sending enough and after a while the controller loses power and shuts down, and Windows doesn't pick it up after a reboot. The bad drivers  would explain why it happened after the upgrade to Vista. I remember when I installed XP for the first time, my USB controller was using the default generic driver 'till I updated them to the special ones for that controller--so I'm pretty sure there are separate drivers for different types of controllers. Perhaps your Vista drivers are no good/outdated. Check on your laptop manufacturer's website to see in your model's support pages / forum--they list tons of issues specific to each model. If it's a consistent problem, it's bound to show up there.

On a side note, I noticed the mouse/keyboard in question are wireless, which means that there's more than a negligible amount of power draw to them. If my theory about not enough power is correct, then the problem wouldn't happen if only one thing (that doesn't require much power) is plugged in. Was the keyboard and mouse plugged into the base station or the laptop itself? Check what happens if you use the (relatively) high power requiring stuff in the powered hub or (if you're not using the hub) plug in the less power-sucking stuff into the laptop--if those external HD's are 3.5 inchers with their own power supply, those would qualify.