Mouse driver locks up MacOS 13.7.6

Question

Created Aug ’25

Replies 4

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Participants 1

Every week or so, mouse driver locks up. The LED laser goes out and none of the buttons operate. It's a generic 7 button USB mouse with my USB keyboard still active. I do not know what precipitates the lockup and a system diagnostic request (Sft-Alt-Ctl-Cmd .) does not seem to yield anything useful.

> ps -ef|grep -i mouse
  501   579     1   0 Mon01PM ??         0:04.42 /System/Library/ExtensionKit/Extensions/MouseExtension.appex/Contents/MacOS/MouseExtension
code-block

so the mouse extension was running at the time. With a "sudo kill -HUP 579" it did not restart.

Also, switching to a different mouse did no good. The mouse driver was behaving like it was deadlocked and I didn't know the correct incantation for restarting it. I power cycle reset the box.

SO:

you have a mouse driver problem
it cannot be just me
It behaves like a deadlock, but not knowing how to get a mouse driver dump, I cannot tell what lock(s) its waiting for.

Boost

Answer 1

brkorb OP

3w

Any hints about how to get a crash dump or (better) a dump of the mouse driver & its data?

0

Answer 2

brkorb OP

2w

kill -ABRT didn't trigger a core dump, so again no diagnostics

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Answer 3

brkorb OP

2w

Happened again -- only one day apart. This time, there was a 13.7.8 install to do, so I did that as my reboot. First, it would not work with my second monitor (the "displays" in system settings saw it, but no way to connect), so I rebooted again. only to be offered an update installation. The update didn't take. Rebooted into a power down, pressed the power button. The second display didn't activate again, so another reboot. I'm up and running.

OH, just to clarify, whenever this happens, I plug in a generic USB mouse. USB Keyboard: works fine, USB mouse (of any sort) dead.

I conclude that it is the USB mouse driver. with 13.7.8, I surely hope this problem goes away.

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Answer 4

brkorb OP

1w

Another day, another lockup. Apple, are you listening? I either need a fix from you or some instructions on how to determine the stack trace. With that, it should be possible to determine which semaphore is being waited on and then figure out where it was acquired in the USB mouse driver code.

P.S. to be clear: 13.7.8 did not resolve this problem.

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