I have a fresh install of Linux Mint 17 with the Cinnamon desktop. All appears well until I try to use lsusb. Whether I run it as root or user, it hangs, and ^c does not kill it.

ps shows it in state 'D' - uninterruptable sleep.

When I tried to reboot, the system hung. After pressing CtrlAltDel, a message was displayed indicating KVM virtualization was ending. Does this mean that Mint17 was running in a virtual machine that was perhaps not configured properly???

My ArchLinux system on the same disk has no problem with lsusb.

Pretty sure you didn't install mint to a virtual machine.

My guesses are a few, I assume it should work as any other linux should.

Could be some unsupported device or timing issue with devices.
Could be bad download or install.