USB mouse and hotkeys freezing in game
Hello, I've been experiencing this problem since January this year where around 2 hours in game my usb mouse will freeze and the hotkeys stop working (awsd, <>, etc), but sims itself doesn't freeze. ...
Forum Discussion
BosseyedWolf The hardware error (LiveKernelEvent 144) is a crash of the Windows USB 3 driver, which is not a surprise to see given what you've described. Typically, all that's needed to resolve this kind of issue is to unplug all USB 3 devices and restart the computer—a real restart, not sleep/wake or even shutdown/reboot. Do you have any other USB 3 devices connected while you play? Do you get the LKE 144 when you're not using the USB mouse?
The dxdiag does also list a number of errors relating to the Nvidia graphics driver, and these could have muddled things when you were testing without your mouse. Either way, it's a good idea to do a clean uninstall and reinstall of the driver, as described here:
You can get the most recent Nvidia drivers here:
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/drivers/
I would suggest starting with one from October 14 or November 4, as they're recent enough to be compatible with Sims 4 (and almost anything else) but look to have been stable at the time. It's easy enough to update from there, but going backwards would require using DDU to remove the newer driver.
Once you've replaced the driver, if you're still getting crashes or freezes, try again without any USB devices connected, not even headphones (earbuds that use a jack would be fine). If that doesn't help either, look for new Reliability Monitor errors and post what you find.
puzzlezaddict thank you for this! Unfortunately I tried the reinstall of the graphics driver (Oct 14th one), and I'm still experiencing the freezing with or without the USB mouse. All the hardware (done through lenovo system update, the nvidia one and amd ryzen) is up to date as far as I can see and I also updated to windows 11 finally (wasn't able to update on release and had to use the deleting font workaround), but this hasn't helped either. I looked in device manager and it said all USB was up to date. The only thing that has changed is since doing the nvidia one, my laptop no longer restarts upon quitting sims and I regain functionality once back to my desktop.
Here's the hardware error info from the reliability monitor from my last crash:
Source
WindowsSummary
Hardware errorDate
01/03/2026 20:24Status
Report sentDescription
A problem with your hardware caused Windows to stop working correctly.Problem signature
Problem Event Name: LiveKernelEvent
Code: 144
Parameter 1: 1009
Parameter 2: fffff6828f41f190
Parameter 3: 0
Parameter 4: 0
OS version: 10_0_26200
Service Pack: 0_0
Product: 768_1
OS Version: 10.0.26200.2.0.0.768.101
Locale ID: 2057Extra information about the problem
Bucket ID: LKD_0x144_COMMAND_ABORT_FAILED_USBXHCI!TelemetryData_CreateReport_VEN_1022_DEV_15b9_REV_0000I've also attached a new dxdiag - thank you for help!!
Featured Places
