Comment 27 for bug 102659

I feel like spamming this thread, however I tried to write this workaround which could be easily applied even by newbies and which works fine for me on Gutsy kernel 2.6.22-11 generic. Concretely it made the 0483:2016 SGS Thomson Microelectronics Fingerprint Reader work properly on my Dell Latitude D820.

1) As root open for editing the file "/etc/rc.local", e.g. by "sudo nano /etc/rc.local"

2) Add the following three lines before the last line (which should contain the text "exit 0" and must be kept like that).

echo -1 > /sys/module/usbcore/parameters/autosuspend
sleep 1
/usr/sbin/lsusb

3) Restart your machine

It will disable autosuspend for all USB devices without having to patch kernel. My attempts to turn off autosuspend for selected devices were not successful.
Remember to remove this script once a new kernel comes out having your problematic device in the USB autosuspend blacklist.