Hi
I was running std Debian Etch (on 2.6.18) and upgraded to Debian 2.6.24 kernel from Testing repository (to get some new DVB options in theory) .
Of all the trivial peripherals, my USB mouse has now stopped working (USB storage was also not automounting for a while I seem to have got that working now)

Mouse is defintely recognised by the system:
lsusb:
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 047d:101f Kensington PocketMouse Pro
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000

dmesg: when connecting mouse:
usb 3-1: new low speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 3
usb 3-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice

Some posts seem to suggest I need an explicit mention in Xorg (some say none are necessary)

Anyway tried this in Xorg.conf without success:

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "USB Mouse"
Driver "mouse"
Option "CorePointer"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"
Option "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

(Synaptics touchpad working OK )

So what has radically changed between kernels (note I didn't make a complete upgrade to Testing as my boot partition free diskspace is critically low despite apt-get clean and purges)
using Gnome 2.14.3

thanks for any insight.

to free up space in /boot you would need to purge some old kernels. I would hold on to 2.6.18 until you get all your issues worked out with the new kernel, and get rid of anything older..

i.e. aptitude purge linux-image-2.6.XX-686

Not sure what is causing your mouse issue