My Keyboard and Mouse freeze after connecting USB device

In the past few weeks I got this situation where my MacBook Air (13" Late 2010 model) would stop responding to the keyboard and trackpad after I connect a USB device (like an external hard disk, or even my iPhone).
I found one (quite inconvenient) solution: if I connect an external USB mouse and keyboard they work, and after a while the built in trackpad and keyboard start working again. But if I do not have an external mouse and keyboard around me, I am quite stuck and only a reboot fixes the situation.
Any idea what might be causing this, or if there is any solution? It is clearly a software issue, as the hardware can be returned to normal state after reboot.
Note: I have the latest OS - Mac OS X Lion 10.7.3 (11D50) and regularly update my software.

I have the same issue, on the same model (late 2010 13" MBA).
I haven't been able to figure out a solution either. Strangely, I recently bought a USB external drive and it *never* causes a freeze upon connection. Only smaller devices (iPod, iPad, FitBit, USB stick) cause it. I need to reboot the computer with the device attached to be able to access it.

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Anyway, Mine is a custom built PC(all drivers and windows fully up to date) which ran XP with zero problems:
Gigabyte mboard and graphics card (Nvidia) with I5 processor and 4GB ram.
If this was a USB hub Powersave issue, then I would still expect the hub to wake up when a new device was pugged in, so I'm going to count that fix out.
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I should have looked at the taskbar clock to see if the time had updated, I'll do that next time if it happens again.
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http://dotnetrix.co.uk
http://glassui.codeplex.com

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Hello Lucy1949,
Sounds like the entire system is just locking up. So it's not really your mouse and keyboard, but the system becomes unresponsive.
Make sure your anti virus programs are up to date and you have ran a virus scan lately.
Put your computer into a clean boot state and see if the problem still happens with minimal programs running.
You should also check to see if the problem reoccurs while in safe mode.
You can find instructions for both of those in this forum thread.
http://goo.gl/w3KQH
If I have helped you in any way click the Kudos button to say Thanks.
The community works together, click Accept as Solution on the post that solves your issue for other members of the community to benefit from the solution.
- Friendship is magical.

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I spent some time around to read all posts here and there.
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Some people are facing a hardware issue with the metallic part behind the mouse cover being too folded to make a proper contact
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airport utility.app 5.3.2 (instead of 5.4.1)
airport base station agent.app 1.5 (instead of 1.5.1)
com.apple.airportbasestationagent.plist dated 29may2008
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http://support.apple.com/downloads/AirPortUtility_5_3_2_forLeopard
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My Keyboard and Mouse freeze after connecting USB device

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