Help! - lost mouse

I'm suddenly having troubles with my mouse again today. I had some problems
with it several days ago after having the computer off for an hour or so to
install a new hard drive and DVD burner - see my Installation Problems
thread if you want details - but it finally started working again and has
been trouble free for several days. Then, a couple of hours ago, it stopped
working again for no obvious reason.

This is a desktop computer and it really slows me down to have to do all my
navigation via the keyboard so any help anyone can render would be
appreciated.

I'm not a hardware guy and I'm not sure what's relevant so I'm going to
throw out all the information I can to help you figure out what's wrong. I'm
sorry for any red herrings or irrelevancies that I may give you.....

I'm running Windows XP Professional SP3 with the ASUS M3A motherboard and 2
GB of memory. The mouse and keyboard are both Microsoft wireless models that
share the same base station (or whatever you call the thing that is actually
hardwired to the USB port and transmits mouse and keyboard signals to the
computer). I've checked the mouse and battery is good. The keyboard works
fine, as you can see by the fact that I'm typing this note ;-)

The computer started acting a bit squirrelly a few hours ago as I was
copying several large folders from one hard drive to another. (They were
each 5 to 10 GB in size and, as you can imagine, it took a noticeable amount
of time for each to be copied from one drive to the other.) As I was
waiting, I played some solitaire computer games and periodically noticed
that a mouse click would lead to a beep. It wasn't the standard Windows beep
that you get when you click on something you shouldn't. This was a longer
purer-toned beep. I've heard those periodically before on this computer and
they typically meant the system was about to have a Blue Screen of Death:
just a single one of those beeps was inevitably followed shortly by the
BSOD. I haven't had one of those in several months - and they were always
few and far between. But today, I heard that beep several times and it was
NOT followed by a BSOD. I was happy about that but given that the computer
always seems to work fine after a BSOD and is definitely not working fine
now, I'm thinking that a BSOD might almost be good news now....

I could go through the rigamarole of trying different mice in different USB
or serial ports like I did last week after installing the drive and burner
but that seemed completely ineffective - the original mouse just started
working out of the blue that time - so I'm going to hold off until I get
your advice.

Last week when I had this problem, someone told me that they often lose
their mouse when the capacitors in the computer discharge but that it comes
back when they reboot. I've rebooted several times but the mouse still isn't
back; it's just frozen dead center in the middle of the screen.

What can I do to diagnose this? I'm guessing that there is some kind of
hardware issue causing this but I'm not sure why it would have started now;
the mouse worked without difficulty for over 2 years until last Monday, gave
me trouble for a couple of hours, then started working again for another 10
days. Now it's on the fritz again but I haven't done anything in the last
few days that would affect the hardware.

--
Rhino

Rhino wrote:
> I'm suddenly having troubles with my mouse again today. I had some
> problems with it several days ago after having the computer off for an
> hour or so to install a new hard drive and DVD burner - see my
> Installation Problems thread if you want details - but it finally
> started working again and has been trouble free for several days. Then,
> a couple of hours ago, it stopped working again for no obvious reason.
>
> This is a desktop computer and it really slows me down to have to do all
> my navigation via the keyboard so any help anyone can render would be
> appreciated.
>
> I'm not a hardware guy and I'm not sure what's relevant so I'm going to
> throw out all the information I can to help you figure out what's wrong.
> I'm sorry for any red herrings or irrelevancies that I may give you.....
>
> I'm running Windows XP Professional SP3 with the ASUS M3A motherboard
> and 2 GB of memory. The mouse and keyboard are both Microsoft wireless
> models that share the same base station (or whatever you call the thing
> that is actually hardwired to the USB port and transmits mouse and
> keyboard signals to the computer). I've checked the mouse and battery is
> good. The keyboard works fine, as you can see by the fact that I'm
> typing this note ;-)
>
> The computer started acting a bit squirrelly a few hours ago as I was
> copying several large folders from one hard drive to another. (They were
> each 5 to 10 GB in size and, as you can imagine, it took a noticeable
> amount of time for each to be copied from one drive to the other.) As I
> was waiting, I played some solitaire computer games and periodically
> noticed that a mouse click would lead to a beep. It wasn't the standard
> Windows beep that you get when you click on something you shouldn't.
> This was a longer purer-toned beep. I've heard those periodically before
> on this computer and they typically meant the system was about to have a
> Blue Screen of Death: just a single one of those beeps was inevitably
> followed shortly by the BSOD. I haven't had one of those in several
> months - and they were always few and far between. But today, I heard
> that beep several times and it was NOT followed by a BSOD. I was happy
> about that but given that the computer always seems to work fine after a
> BSOD and is definitely not working fine now, I'm thinking that a BSOD
> might almost be good news now....
>
> I could go through the rigamarole of trying different mice in different
> USB or serial ports like I did last week after installing the drive and
> burner but that seemed completely ineffective - the original mouse just
> started working out of the blue that time - so I'm going to hold off
> until I get your advice.
>
> Last week when I had this problem, someone told me that they often lose
> their mouse when the capacitors in the computer discharge but that it
> comes back when they reboot. I've rebooted several times but the mouse
> still isn't back; it's just frozen dead center in the middle of the screen.
>
> What can I do to diagnose this? I'm guessing that there is some kind of
> hardware issue causing this but I'm not sure why it would have started
> now; the mouse worked without difficulty for over 2 years until last
> Monday, gave me trouble for a couple of hours, then started working
> again for another 10 days. Now it's on the fritz again but I haven't
> done anything in the last few days that would affect the hardware.
>
> --
> Rhino

If it was me, I'd switch over to wired mouse and wired keyboard and
see if the situation works any better. I think a wired solution
is better than a "BSOD" waiting for me :-(

The beep could be some input buffer overflowing (meaning the OS isn't
reading the data coming from the keyboard and mouse, and it's piling up).
That's about all that comes to mind.

Paul

"Rhino" <> wrote in message
news:jfqbqd$odj$...
> I'm suddenly having troubles with my mouse again today. I had some
> problems with it several days ago after having the computer off for an
> hour or so to install a new hard drive and DVD burner - see my
> Installation Problems thread if you want details - but it finally started
> working again and has been trouble free for several days. Then, a couple
> of hours ago, it stopped working again for no obvious reason.
>
> This is a desktop computer and it really slows me down to have to do all
> my navigation via the keyboard so any help anyone can render would be
> appreciated.
>
> I'm not a hardware guy and I'm not sure what's relevant so I'm going to
> throw out all the information I can to help you figure out what's wrong.
> I'm sorry for any red herrings or irrelevancies that I may give you.....
>
> I'm running Windows XP Professional SP3 with the ASUS M3A motherboard and
> 2 GB of memory. The mouse and keyboard are both Microsoft wireless models
> that share the same base station (or whatever you call the thing that is
> actually hardwired to the USB port and transmits mouse and keyboard
> signals to the computer). I've checked the mouse and battery is good. The
> keyboard works fine, as you can see by the fact that I'm typing this note
> ;-)
>
> The computer started acting a bit squirrelly a few hours ago as I was
> copying several large folders from one hard drive to another. (They were
> each 5 to 10 GB in size and, as you can imagine, it took a noticeable
> amount of time for each to be copied from one drive to the other.) As I
> was waiting, I played some solitaire computer games and periodically
> noticed that a mouse click would lead to a beep. It wasn't the standard
> Windows beep that you get when you click on something you shouldn't. This
> was a longer purer-toned beep. I've heard those periodically before on
> this computer and they typically meant the system was about to have a Blue
> Screen of Death: just a single one of those beeps was inevitably followed
> shortly by the BSOD. I haven't had one of those in several months - and
> they were always few and far between. But today, I heard that beep several
> times and it was NOT followed by a BSOD. I was happy about that but given
> that the computer always seems to work fine after a BSOD and is definitely
> not working fine now, I'm thinking that a BSOD might almost be good news
> now....
>
> I could go through the rigamarole of trying different mice in different
> USB or serial ports like I did last week after installing the drive and
> burner but that seemed completely ineffective - the original mouse just
> started working out of the blue that time - so I'm going to hold off until
> I get your advice.
>
> Last week when I had this problem, someone told me that they often lose
> their mouse when the capacitors in the computer discharge but that it
> comes back when they reboot. I've rebooted several times but the mouse
> still isn't back; it's just frozen dead center in the middle of the
> screen.
>
> What can I do to diagnose this? I'm guessing that there is some kind of
> hardware issue causing this but I'm not sure why it would have started
> now; the mouse worked without difficulty for over 2 years until last
> Monday, gave me trouble for a couple of hours, then started working again
> for another 10 days. Now it's on the fritz again but I haven't done
> anything in the last few days that would affect the hardware.
>

Well, that was spooky! I just came back in here to see if anyone had replied
to my post and suddenly noticed that my mouse was back. Unfortunately, it
was only back for a few seconds, then winked out again!

For a few moments there, I thought the problem had vanished as suddenly as
it had begun but then the cursor started jerking instead of moving smoothly
and then it disappeared entirely after a few seconds. That's just what
happened when it went away this afternoon.

Apparently, if I stop using it altogether for a few hours, it will work
again for a few seconds, then disappear again.

Like I said, I'm not a hardware guy but this doesn't make a lot of sense to
me. I hope it makes more sense to those of you who are more familiar with
hardware.....

--
Rhino

Another update with more symptoms.

I tried going to a website to try to post these same symptoms and had so
much trouble trying to navigate to where I wanted to click, I got
exasperated and decided to try plugging in another mouse. I didn't expect
that to work since it was exactly what I tried unsuccessfully when I first
had mouse problems last week.

But this time, the alternate mouse, a wired Logitech USB mouse, worked
immediately and I'm back in business! That's great of course since I'm much
more productive with a working mouse than having to tab over dozens of
points to get to the one that I want to click. But I'd really like to get my
wireless mouse working so I'd still love to get some suggestions on
diagnosing and resolving my problem with my wireless mouse.

Given that the wireless mouse and keyboard were sharing the same "base
station" (or whatever it is properly called) and the keyboard never stopped
working, what would account for the wireless mouse freezing up on me? I have
no idea whatsoever how to troubleshoot USB issues like this.

--
Rhino

Rhino wrote:
> Another update with more symptoms.
>
> I tried going to a website to try to post these same symptoms and had so
> much trouble trying to navigate to where I wanted to click, I got
> exasperated and decided to try plugging in another mouse. I didn't
> expect that to work since it was exactly what I tried unsuccessfully
> when I first had mouse problems last week.
>
> But this time, the alternate mouse, a wired Logitech USB mouse, worked
> immediately and I'm back in business! That's great of course since I'm
> much more productive with a working mouse than having to tab over dozens
> of points to get to the one that I want to click. But I'd really like to
> get my wireless mouse working so I'd still love to get some suggestions
> on diagnosing and resolving my problem with my wireless mouse.
>
> Given that the wireless mouse and keyboard were sharing the same "base
> station" (or whatever it is properly called) and the keyboard never
> stopped working, what would account for the wireless mouse freezing up
> on me? I have no idea whatsoever how to troubleshoot USB issues like this.
>
> --
> Rhino

So, it's like, "a bad mouse" ?

What is you switch to wired keyboard, keep wireless base station and
use wireless mouse ? What are the symptoms then ? Is wireless mouse
still flaky ?

Paul

Paul wrote:
> Rhino wrote:
>> Another update with more symptoms.
>>
>> I tried going to a website to try to post these same symptoms and had
>> so much trouble trying to navigate to where I wanted to click, I got
>> exasperated and decided to try plugging in another mouse. I didn't
>> expect that to work since it was exactly what I tried unsuccessfully
>> when I first had mouse problems last week.
>>
>> But this time, the alternate mouse, a wired Logitech USB mouse, worked
>> immediately and I'm back in business! That's great of course since I'm
>> much more productive with a working mouse than having to tab over
>> dozens of points to get to the one that I want to click. But I'd
>> really like to get my wireless mouse working so I'd still love to get
>> some suggestions on diagnosing and resolving my problem with my
>> wireless mouse.
>>
>> Given that the wireless mouse and keyboard were sharing the same "base
>> station" (or whatever it is properly called) and the keyboard never
>> stopped working, what would account for the wireless mouse freezing up
>> on me? I have no idea whatsoever how to troubleshoot USB issues like
>> this.
>>
>> --
>> Rhino
>
> So, it's like, "a bad mouse" ?
>
> What is you switch to wired keyboard, keep wireless base station and
> use wireless mouse ? What are the symptoms then ? Is wireless mouse
> still flaky ?
>
> Paul

Also, what kind of batteries does the mouse use ?

Paul

On 26/01/2012 04:55, Rhino wrote:
> Another update with more symptoms.
>
> I tried going to a website to try to post these same symptoms and had so much trouble trying to navigate to where I wanted to click, I got exasperated and decided to try plugging in another mouse. I didn't expect that to work since it was exactly what I tried unsuccessfully when I first had mouse problems last week.
>
> But this time, the alternate mouse, a wired Logitech USB mouse, worked immediately and I'm back in business! That's great of course since I'm much more productive with a working mouse than having to tab over dozens of points to get to the one that I want to click. But I'd really like to get my wireless mouse working so I'd still love to get some suggestions on diagnosing and resolving my problem with my wireless mouse.
>
> Given that the wireless mouse and keyboard were sharing the same "base station" (or whatever it is properly called) and the keyboard never stopped working, what would account for the wireless mouse freezing up on me? I have no idea whatsoever how to troubleshoot USB issues like this.
>
> --
> Rhino

Does the wireless mouse use batteries, or is it the rechargeable kind?
If rechargeable, it's worth noting that they can only be recharged a
limited number of times (~1000), so may have reached the end of their
useful life.

On 01/25/12 08:56 pm, Rhino wrote:

> I'm suddenly having troubles with my mouse again today. I had some
> problems with it several days ago after having the computer off for an
> hour or so to install a new hard drive and DVD burner - see my
> Installation Problems thread if you want details - but it finally
> started working again and has been trouble free for several days. Then,
> a couple of hours ago, it stopped working again for no obvious reason.
>
> This is a desktop computer and it really slows me down to have to do all
> my navigation via the keyboard so any help anyone can render would be
> appreciated.
>
> I'm not a hardware guy and I'm not sure what's relevant so I'm going to
> throw out all the information I can to help you figure out what's wrong.
> I'm sorry for any red herrings or irrelevancies that I may give you.....
>
> I'm running Windows XP Professional SP3 with the ASUS M3A motherboard
> and 2 GB of memory. The mouse and keyboard are both Microsoft wireless
> models that share the same base station (or whatever you call the thing
> that is actually hardwired to the USB port and transmits mouse and
> keyboard signals to the computer). I've checked the mouse and battery is
> good. The keyboard works fine, as you can see by the fact that I'm
> typing this note ;-)
>
> The computer started acting a bit squirrelly a few hours ago as I was
> copying several large folders from one hard drive to another. (They were
> each 5 to 10 GB in size and, as you can imagine, it took a noticeable
> amount of time for each to be copied from one drive to the other.) As I
> was waiting, I played some solitaire computer games and periodically
> noticed that a mouse click would lead to a beep. It wasn't the standard
> Windows beep that you get when you click on something you shouldn't.
> This was a longer purer-toned beep. I've heard those periodically before
> on this computer and they typically meant the system was about to have a
> Blue Screen of Death: just a single one of those beeps was inevitably
> followed shortly by the BSOD. I haven't had one of those in several
> months - and they were always few and far between. But today, I heard
> that beep several times and it was NOT followed by a BSOD. I was happy
> about that but given that the computer always seems to work fine after a
> BSOD and is definitely not working fine now, I'm thinking that a BSOD
> might almost be good news now....
>
> I could go through the rigamarole of trying different mice in different
> USB or serial ports like I did last week after installing the drive and
> burner but that seemed completely ineffective - the original mouse just
> started working out of the blue that time - so I'm going to hold off
> until I get your advice.
>
> Last week when I had this problem, someone told me that they often lose
> their mouse when the capacitors in the computer discharge but that it
> comes back when they reboot. I've rebooted several times but the mouse
> still isn't back; it's just frozen dead center in the middle of the screen.
>
> What can I do to diagnose this? I'm guessing that there is some kind of
> hardware issue causing this but I'm not sure why it would have started
> now; the mouse worked without difficulty for over 2 years until last
> Monday, gave me trouble for a couple of hours, then started working
> again for another 10 days. Now it's on the fritz again but I haven't
> done anything in the last few days that would affect the hardware.

I have Logitech Cordless Optical TrackMan devices on two different
computers, one running Win7Pro and one running "the OS for which Windows
was intended to be merely a placeholder" (namely. IBM's OS/2, in its
current OEM incarnation, eComStation, for which no viruses are known to
have ever existed outside a laboratory). On both machines the "mouse" --
actually a trackball -- will cease working from time to time, and
usually the only solution is to unplug the receiver from the computer
and reconnect it. On the Win7 machine, it's especially when the machine
has rebooted after an update that it loses contact with the trackball.

I wonder whether it's significant that both my machines use Asus
motherboards, just as yours does. One is an M2N-SLI Deluxe, the other an
M4A88TD-V EVO.

Perce

"Rob" <> wrote in message
news:...
> On 26/01/2012 04:55, Rhino wrote:
>> Another update with more symptoms.
>>
>> I tried going to a website to try to post these same symptoms and had so
>> much trouble trying to navigate to where I wanted to click, I got
>> exasperated and decided to try plugging in another mouse. I didn't expect
>> that to work since it was exactly what I tried unsuccessfully when I
>> first had mouse problems last week.
>>
>> But this time, the alternate mouse, a wired Logitech USB mouse, worked
>> immediately and I'm back in business! That's great of course since I'm
>> much more productive with a working mouse than having to tab over dozens
>> of points to get to the one that I want to click. But I'd really like to
>> get my wireless mouse working so I'd still love to get some suggestions
>> on diagnosing and resolving my problem with my wireless mouse.
>>
>> Given that the wireless mouse and keyboard were sharing the same "base
>> station" (or whatever it is properly called) and the keyboard never
>> stopped working, what would account for the wireless mouse freezing up on
>> me? I have no idea whatsoever how to troubleshoot USB issues like this.
>>
>> --
>> Rhino
>
> Does the wireless mouse use batteries, or is it the rechargeable kind?
> If rechargeable, it's worth noting that they can only be recharged a
> limited number of times (~1000), so may have reached the end of their
> useful life.
>
The wireless mouse uses two AAA batteries. I alternate between two pairs of
rechargeable batteries. I don't keep track of each recharge but I doubt
they've had more than a few dozen recharges, certainly nowhere near 1000.

Mind you, these are Duracell rechargeables and I read an article some time
after I bought them that said the Duracell rechargeables are among the worst
of the rechargeable batteries for durability. I wish I'd thought to research
that before buying them! So maybe that IS the issue. I'll swap out the
batteries and watch that. Maybe it's time to replace those rechargeables
with one of the better brands....

--
Just for the heck of it, I disconnected my backup mouse just now and tried
the wireless mouse and it was working again. However, a low battery warning
popped up very quickly and I swapped out the batteries. This gave me a
strong battery level but the mouse immediately froze again despite that! I'm
back on the wired mouse for now....

This really isn't making a lot of sense. Why would the mouse freeze after
changing to batteries that it admits are good?

--
Rhino

Percival P. Cassidy wrote:
> On 01/25/12 08:56 pm, Rhino wrote:
>
>> I'm suddenly having troubles with my mouse again today. I had some
>> problems with it several days ago after having the computer off for an
>> hour or so to install a new hard drive and DVD burner - see my
>> Installation Problems thread if you want details - but it finally
>> started working again and has been trouble free for several days. Then,
>> a couple of hours ago, it stopped working again for no obvious reason.
>>
>> This is a desktop computer and it really slows me down to have to do all
>> my navigation via the keyboard so any help anyone can render would be
>> appreciated.
>>
>> I'm not a hardware guy and I'm not sure what's relevant so I'm going to
>> throw out all the information I can to help you figure out what's wrong.
>> I'm sorry for any red herrings or irrelevancies that I may give you.....
>>
>> I'm running Windows XP Professional SP3 with the ASUS M3A motherboard
>> and 2 GB of memory. The mouse and keyboard are both Microsoft wireless
>> models that share the same base station (or whatever you call the thing
>> that is actually hardwired to the USB port and transmits mouse and
>> keyboard signals to the computer). I've checked the mouse and battery is
>> good. The keyboard works fine, as you can see by the fact that I'm
>> typing this note ;-)
>>
>> The computer started acting a bit squirrelly a few hours ago as I was
>> copying several large folders from one hard drive to another. (They were
>> each 5 to 10 GB in size and, as you can imagine, it took a noticeable
>> amount of time for each to be copied from one drive to the other.) As I
>> was waiting, I played some solitaire computer games and periodically
>> noticed that a mouse click would lead to a beep. It wasn't the standard
>> Windows beep that you get when you click on something you shouldn't.
>> This was a longer purer-toned beep. I've heard those periodically before
>> on this computer and they typically meant the system was about to have a
>> Blue Screen of Death: just a single one of those beeps was inevitably
>> followed shortly by the BSOD. I haven't had one of those in several
>> months - and they were always few and far between. But today, I heard
>> that beep several times and it was NOT followed by a BSOD. I was happy
>> about that but given that the computer always seems to work fine after a
>> BSOD and is definitely not working fine now, I'm thinking that a BSOD
>> might almost be good news now....
>>
>> I could go through the rigamarole of trying different mice in different
>> USB or serial ports like I did last week after installing the drive and
>> burner but that seemed completely ineffective - the original mouse just
>> started working out of the blue that time - so I'm going to hold off
>> until I get your advice.
>>
>> Last week when I had this problem, someone told me that they often lose
>> their mouse when the capacitors in the computer discharge but that it
>> comes back when they reboot. I've rebooted several times but the mouse
>> still isn't back; it's just frozen dead center in the middle of the
>> screen.
>>
>> What can I do to diagnose this? I'm guessing that there is some kind of
>> hardware issue causing this but I'm not sure why it would have started
>> now; the mouse worked without difficulty for over 2 years until last
>> Monday, gave me trouble for a couple of hours, then started working
>> again for another 10 days. Now it's on the fritz again but I haven't
>> done anything in the last few days that would affect the hardware.
>
> I have Logitech Cordless Optical TrackMan devices on two different
> computers, one running Win7Pro and one running "the OS for which Windows
> was intended to be merely a placeholder" (namely. IBM's OS/2, in its
> current OEM incarnation, eComStation, for which no viruses are known to
> have ever existed outside a laboratory). On both machines the "mouse" --
> actually a trackball -- will cease working from time to time, and
> usually the only solution is to unplug the receiver from the computer
> and reconnect it. On the Win7 machine, it's especially when the machine
> has rebooted after an update that it loses contact with the trackball.
>
> I wonder whether it's significant that both my machines use Asus
> motherboards, just as yours does. One is an M2N-SLI Deluxe, the other an
> M4A88TD-V EVO.
>
> Perce
>

You're thinking it's one of those settings like the "Legacy USB support"
or the like ? There are usually a few settings in the USB section
you can play with.

Things like "USB legacy support" can be found on this page. Although
in this case, they didn't provide any details.

http://www.techarp.com/freebog.aspx

This is a little bit more helpful, but not by much.

http://support.gateway.com/s/MOTHERB...m0032641.shtml

The way some of this works, is the BIOS "pulls" something out of
the USB device and "pushed" it into the PS/2 block on the SuperI/O.
Older OSes are likely to be equipped to read PS/2 properly, so if
the BIOS works behind the scenes, the old OS can use the USB
keyboard and mouse, when strictly speaking, they shouldn't
be able to do.

Paul