I have begun to have a number of erratic I/O problems and I can't figure out what is going on. First my sound device could not be found, but a reboot fixed that. Now I can't seem to adjust the volume on the software side. Using the volume slider either does nothing or suddenly changes the volume minutes after I touched anything. My webcam has stopped working entirely. On one reboot, my mouse started stuttering, and unplugging it and plugging it in again made it stop working altogether. Rebooting fixed that for now. It's beginning to feel like every reboot just rolls the dice on what will and will not work.

I have no way of knowing whether these problems are connected, but I am assuming they are because they all started on the same day. I have no idea what's changed since yesterday, though. I haven't installed or uninstalled anything except for software updates.

I'm running Ubuntu 10.04 64-bit on a custom-built desktop.