Laptop USB ports stop working: how to restart them without restarting the PC? [duplicate]

Solution 1:

Make sure that all USB devices are unplugged/safely removed and then try:

sudo modprobe -r usbhid && sleep 5 && sudo modprobe usbhid

and

sudo modprobe -r usb-storage
sudo modprobe usb-storage

This will reload the kernel modules for USB keyboards/mice and usb hdd's, and might emulate whatever it is about restarting that is fixing your problem. Good luck.

Solution 2:

Another thing worth trying: restart the udev subsystem:

sudo restart udev

Tell us whether that one worked.

As for finding out what happens, I would start by going through the system logs. For example, when something like that happens, try

dmesg | tail

Otherwise, record the exact time, and later see in

/var/log/syslog

for example by

gksudo gedit /var/log/syslog