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Dimension E521 - WinXP Pro - Pointer Freeze - Optical Mouse
I have a new (two weeks old) Dimension E521, AMD X2, 2 gigs of memory, 250 gig HD, WinXP Pro. It came with the standard Dell "ball" mouse. Those are terrible, I know, but I didn't think it mattered as I planned to replace it with an optical mouse I already have, a standard Microsoft optical mouse that came with Intellipoint driver 4.3. The standard Dell mouse works fine, but my optical mouse freezes constantly (times range from a split second to several seconds).
The funny thing is, that mouse is about a year and a half old. It has always (and still does) work on my old computer, works on my son's Dell (different model dimension), works on several Dell's at work, plus several other brand computers. All of those computers are Intel based systems, except my own old system, it's a home built AMD system.
I've tried all the fixes in the Wizard here on the Dell site, up to, but not including, re-loading the OS. I've tried different, or no mouse pads (six in all, plus five different kinds of paper with different textures and compositions. Tried each of the different USB ports, tried my sons optical mouse (same model as mine). It did not work either. I got the newest drivers from Microsoft (ver 5.0). Nothing so far has worked, yet the mouse works fine on other systems (both as usb and PS2 mounted).
I've looked here and on the web, but so far have only found problems related to various versions of unix/linux installations. I tried the "chat" thing here at Dell, but pretty much got told to " off". Oh, they used polite words, but since the mouse wasn't supplied by Dell they can't (read won't) help. If I used a esoteric device of some kind they might have a point, but a industry standard mouse that works fine in every other system I tried it on, come on. It has to be this computer.
I saw one suggestion here about getting a pci mounted usb board. I have one in my old computer that I can try and I will once I get all of my files transfered.
Anyone have any other suggestions I can try?
Thanks!
The funny thing is, that mouse is about a year and a half old. It has always (and still does) work on my old computer, works on my son's Dell (different model dimension), works on several Dell's at work, plus several other brand computers. All of those computers are Intel based systems, except my own old system, it's a home built AMD system.
I've tried all the fixes in the Wizard here on the Dell site, up to, but not including, re-loading the OS. I've tried different, or no mouse pads (six in all, plus five different kinds of paper with different textures and compositions. Tried each of the different USB ports, tried my sons optical mouse (same model as mine). It did not work either. I got the newest drivers from Microsoft (ver 5.0). Nothing so far has worked, yet the mouse works fine on other systems (both as usb and PS2 mounted).
I've looked here and on the web, but so far have only found problems related to various versions of unix/linux installations. I tried the "chat" thing here at Dell, but pretty much got told to " off". Oh, they used polite words, but since the mouse wasn't supplied by Dell they can't (read won't) help. If I used a esoteric device of some kind they might have a point, but a industry standard mouse that works fine in every other system I tried it on, come on. It has to be this computer.
I saw one suggestion here about getting a pci mounted usb board. I have one in my old computer that I can try and I will once I get all of my files transfered.
Anyone have any other suggestions I can try?
Thanks!
kirkd
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November 6th, 2006 20:00
The best thing you did was NOT to reinstall Windows!!
BronzeDragon
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November 7th, 2006 16:00
The device manager shows everything (all hardware) is ok and all are functioning correctly. No alerts on anything. I tried the testing program that comes on the cd with the computer (had to load it special). During the testing the mouse worked fine, no freezes, and the results showed that it was ok. But back under windows the freezes were still there.
I attached the mouse with windows running, and to see if it mad a difference, with the computer turned off. No difference in operation, and in both cases windows detected the change in hardware.
Everything in the Mouse properties is set to be identical with those on the old computer.
No, I didn't uninstall the old driver, just auto-ran the intellipoint cd (version 4.3). When that didn't help I looked for and downloaded the newest driver from Microsoft (version 5) and ran the executable they supplied. In fact, the current Dell mouse (ball type) is still using those drivers and it works just fine. Never thought about uninstalling the old drivers, never did it before, just assumed (yeah, I know) that the new ones would either over write or replace the existing ones. I'll give it a shot if it would help.
I'm not a novice to computers by any means, got my first one (an Atari) way back in '83, but was reading anything I could get my hands on as far back as '76 or '77. Wanted to get a HeathKit one to build it myself so bad I could taste it (just couldn't afford it). I managed (and used) two systems for my job, a mini-mainframe by Prime Computers and Sparc based system by Sun. Trouble is I didn't keep up with all the changes going on. Now I'm not much more than an average user - , I still drop back to a DOS window to do some things.
My son is the techie now. He's a senior and has worked his last two summers for the company that maintains our school's computers (all Dells) and he couldn't help, nor could his boss. That's mostly what they do, re-image the older computers, remove some and replace them with new ones which they have to set up. They have some of the 520s but haven't had any problems.
Willing to listen to any suggestions.
Thanks
kirkd
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5.2K Posts
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November 7th, 2006 18:00
My mouse (wireless optical) does the same thing sometimes when there is high CPU activity, but this normal.
I started 1n 1976 also. Had two Heathkits. For what I had into the first one, an H-8, after inflation, I could buy six XPS 700s!!!!!! 64 KB of Ram was $1000!!!