Static Electricity and Grounded USB Mousepad

iamdarkyoshi · November 25, 2015

So as some of you may know, I have a USB powered mousepad. I am not joking. It has a metal frame, and this frame is grounded to the USB port. Whenever I sit down (house is dry) I shock the mousepad and it causes all of my USB devices to "restart"

The PC keeps going fine, its just that the mouse and keyboard are unresponsive for a bit. Why would this be freaking out the PC? The USB shield is grounded to the PC chassis...

Windows plays the "device disconnect" sound a couple times when this happens. Ideas? The PC itself more than likely grounded though at least one of the things plugged into it (not sure if my power cable is still grounded, but I know my monitor is)