The guess about nforce2 to blame was wrong. In bug 87386 (now a duplicate of this one) someone has the same problem with a sis chipset.
** Summary changed: - USB devices do not work with nforce 2 based motherboards + USB devices are not recognized by nforce 2 based motherboards ** Summary changed: - USB devices are not recognized by nforce 2 based motherboards + USB devices are not recognized when having ehci_hcd modprobed -- USB devices are not recognized when having ehci_hcd modprobed https://launchpad.net/bugs/88746 -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
