Stumped-mouse

[dschifx@aol.com]

Yesterday, a friend of mine was working at his pc (Vista Business Edition) and his mouse started failing, then wouldn't work. Don't know what the messages were-wasn't there.

But he has a Microsoft Intellimouse (PS2). He had an error about the driver not recognized (had been working fine), so I advised him to uninstall the driver and reboot, thinking Vista would see the new device and install the driver. Didn't work. Said something about not being able to find a driver and would try again next reboot. Same thing happened on 2nd reboot. I have a PS2-USB converter cable, so we tried plugging mouse into one of his USB ports- not recognized. We got a different mouse (actually his laptop USB mouse- HID compliant device), plugged it in and it was instantly recognized and installed.

We downloaded Microsoft drivers for Intellimouse and installed them thinking we had lost the driver somehow. We even tried Windows Update with the Intellimouse connected, but Update said everything was up to date. Tried the Intellimouse again, and same result. What is weird is a cursor appears on the screen at bootup with the intellimouse plugged in, but there is no control, can't move the mouse. In Device Manager the mouse shows up as unrecognized device.

Is this a hardware issue, a software issue, or what.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated

[unionflag]

Quickest fix is for your friend to ditch the PS2 mouse and buy a USB one since you've already proved this works okay. Or even buy a non-microsoft PS2 mouse. I use a logitech PS2 mouse (no ball) and the scroll-wheel works without having to install any drivers. The driver is only required to enable other mouse functions which I would never use.

[dschifx@aol.com]

Thanks, Union for the suggestion. I had thought about doing just that, but there is one detail which is telling-

I had put a PS2-USB adapter on the Intellimouse and plugged it into one of the available USB ports. Vista still wouldn't recognize the mouse.

Yet, when I plugged the HID compliant USB mouse into the same USB port, it was instantly recognized.

This leads me to believe it's a software problem.

By the way, one thing I omitted in the original thread was that we tried 3 different Intellimouse mice and none was recognized. Yet they work fine in another Vista pc.