Any other tech weenies out there, if you could help...

[camwyn]

Got a user whose machine's been freezing up the mouse cursor for a while- that is to say, about a week now. Last time this happened, the mouse resumed working after I unplugged it and plugged it back in. User has since found this to no longer be the case. In fact, the computer no longer acknowledges the existence of PS/2 mice, and a USB mouse is detected- but the cursor appears for a few seconds and does not respond to clicks or motion on the mouse. THen the cursor vanishes. It reappears every few seconds, still frozen, and disappears after that.

Machine is a Dell Dimension of some kind, running on a fully patched edition of Windows 2000. Mouse is currently a Logitech MX310 (I think). I have tried connecting PS/2 mice and USB mice. I have deleted all mice from the system while in safe mode in the hopes that it would detect the new one without conflict; it did not detect the Logitech in ps/2 mode, and showed the behavior given above when I took off the ps/2 to USB adapter and plugged it into the USB port.

Any tips? The BIOS setup screen is a typically crappy Dell one that does not let me see whether the PS/2 port is enabled or not.

ETA: I got into the options on the BIOS and saw that the PS/2 mouse port is indeed enabled. I cannot, however, get the machine to go back to factory defaults or failsafe defaults. That option simply doesn't exist.

EATA: After lunch, I am going to CompUSA and buying a PCI USB card for this computer, as well as any serial mice the store may have mouldering in the back. The USB card will have nowt to do with the standard on-board connectors, so if the USB mouse STILL doesn't work we'll have isolated the problem a little further. If there are any serial mice left, that'll be one more test...

Comments

[prodigal.livejournal.com]

I had a similar experience with the Dell I was using at my last job - it would stop responding to my USB mouse every so often, and the only way to get it to start again was to unplug and replug it.

Here's what I would recommend - there's an option in WinXP which I believe also exists in Win2k to use the numeric keypad instead of a mouse. Go into Accessibility Options , and click the Mouse tab. Click the Settings button to set whether you want MouseKeys to run when Num Lock is turned on or off.

Once you do that, turn on MouseKeys and unplug any connected mouse. Go into Device Mangler and delete all mouse drivers, then power down.

Once it's shut down, plug the mouse back in, and reboot. When Windows is up and running again, install the most current mouse driver, and that should hopefully fix ya. :)

[camwyn]

I already deleted all the mouse drivers in the Add / Remove Hardware section of Control Panel. On reboot the computer detected the USB mouse, but then went back into 'mouse exists once every five seconds' mode. No sign of recognizing ps/2 mice at all.

shot in the dark

[zed42.livejournal.com]

try disabling the ps/2 port in the bios and then using the usb mouse... my first guess is that there's a physical connection glitch in the ps/2 connector on the mobo that's fooling windose into finding a ps/2 mouse that doesn't exist and then losing it, and fubaring any ps/2 mouse that's connected.

but i'm a software guy and that's a hardware problem :)

Re: shot in the dark

[camwyn]

Tried that. Hasn't helped, alas. Thank you for trying.

[prodigal.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's a problem with the USB device and the PS2 port, then? Sorry I couldn't be more help.

[camwyn]

The USB device was bought earlier this afternoon, so I doubt there's anything physically wrong with it... *sigh* Her copy of Windows doesn't even seem to understand what mice are any more. When I went to the hardware install wizard, it scanned for devices and gave me a list of present items. I asked it to add a new item and it failed to come up with any possible driver that even resembled that for a mouse. There wasn't even an option to install 'human interface devices'.

[prodigal.livejournal.com]

I think we may have managed to talk at cross-purposes just now - when I wrote "USB device," I meant the USB port built into the motherboard.

If that's what you also meant, then I apologise for my confusion. :)

[camwyn]

Ah, okay.

This is entirely possible. I've turned off the PS/2 port in the BIOS. The mouse is not getting any kind of light in the belly (it's an optical mouse) except very sporadically. I actually tried installing Logitech's MouseWare, and it briefly seemed to detect the 310, but nothing happened when I tried to click on the setup buttons by use of tab and space or enter keys.

[zed42.livejournal.com]

the light thing seems to indicate a connector problem... have you tried with the pci/usb card yet?

it's also possible that the computer is sufferring from alzheimer's and need to retire...

[prodigal.livejournal.com]

If it's not lighting up, then my next guess would be that it's having trouble drawing power from the computer's power supply - so either there'd be a problem with the mouse cord itself, or with the port it's plugged into.

What model is it?

[moiety-tx.livejournal.com]

What model of Dimension is it? I can find you the bios-reset-thingie, given that...

Re: What model is it?

[camwyn]

Turned out to be an Optiplex, not a Dimension, and the mobo's been replaced. That solved the problem.