Installed Winston beta 3. During install process, told it I had a mousesystems mouse. .Started X, realised I hadn't toggled the little switch on the bottom of the mouse, toggled that, it then worked properly. Then later crashed machine. Following fsck, kudzu popped up, complaining about a vanished mouse. I don't know whether this was due to X crash, or to toggling the whatever-it-is underneath the mouse. Suggestion from husband: "probably trying to be too clever: this is a mousesystems mouse with no plug and play identifiers on it". The mouse was definitely still there. Really. Subsequent crashes and fscks didn't produce kudzu so whether this a one-off, because I fiddled with the button beneath, or what, I dunno.
Um, changing the button on the mouse will most likely change how it responds to the probes. Did it actually reprobe as something else ("Generic Serial Mouse", for example?)
Closed; lack of input. Also, if the mouse changed protocols, it probably will reprobe as something different, and there's not much I can do about it.