USB mouse killed my video card. (by the buggles)

[leggy]

Right listen to this.

THe other day I decided to pull my USB mouse out and fit the ps2 adapter to to free a USB port. The wierd thing is, after I pulled it out (when running windows XP) the screen bacame corrupt. Which manifested itself as coloured squares all over the screen. I thought a quick restart will sort it. NO. Even the boot graphics are corrupt, which led me to believe I had indeed b0rked my vid card.

After a day nothing had been sorted and the video display was randomly swithching off. I was therefore forced to soil my pc with a TNT2 which as it happens, works perfectly. I have since bought a new Radeon to console myself.

What I want to know is:

How can pulling a USB mouse out while the pc is running, break a perferctly good gf4 fitted to an AGP port? I had a suspicion my monitor cable was too tight and possibly pulling at the card but this only happened after pulling the usb cable out (i.e the exact instance).

Your thoughts on this disasterous affair are welcome

 

[xane]

Pulling out any plug puts a strain on the motherboard, if that moves then it could pull on the daughterboard cards inside as they would be screwed to the case as well.

Also, I've often seen little sparks when plugging in and out USB connectors, so it may have shorted something that way.

My most annoying instance was a simple replacement keyboard, both the keyboard and mouse leads ran through a hole in the desk to the PC underneath, I disconnected the keyboard PS2 plug and pulled the wire above the desk, but I pulled the mouse wire instead, which janked the motherboard and wrecked the PS2 connector block for the keyboard and mouse.

Result: one perfectly working motherboard that you can't connect a keyboard or mouse to (and it was an old one that doesn't support native USB).

 

[babs]

Maybe it didn't like suddenly having to do something with the potential 500mA left unused by the port. Not a lot I know, but we all know it doesn't take much. I know my machine whinges if I disconnect my card readers without using the windows thing to turn them off and safely remove.
But if your cable was tight, then yeah I'd go with that.

 

[Deadmanwalking]

Ahah, i think he may have solved why my Gfx card was borke

I was unplugging USB slots etc like a butter before mine did exactly the same thing. Turn Fastwrites off and reseat the GF4, then hope. Worked for me

 

[fatbusinessman]

Maybe it didn't like suddenly having to do something with the potential 500mA left unused by the port. Not a lot I know, but we all know it doesn't take much. I know my machine whinges if I disconnect my card readers without using the windows thing to turn them off and safely remove.

That's for a different reason - I believe it's because Windows keeps a write buffer of data to be written to the device to increase performance. This buffer, of course, needs flushing before the reader can be removed.