Wireless Intermittently drop off and mouse randomly stops working

Question

I am going to explain two problems that I am having with over 30 Dell Latitude D510.

Part 1.

Problem number one is that the optical mouse will intermittently stop working. The keyboard and a SR IT4600 Handheld Scanner still work during the time that the mouse is not working. The optical light goes out on the mouse when it stops. You have to unplug them and reinsert them for the mice to function. The time between some of them doing this is also random. With some laptops, it occurs daily and others almost monthly.

I have 4 different types of mice. Two are IBM optical mice and the other two are dell mice that came with the D510 we had purchased. All four have this same problem on my D510. I have also tested ALL 4 mice on the same laptop that has this issue each of them failed.

I have gone to device manager checked power management setting for the USB Root Hub and unchecked: “Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power.”

Even with that change, they still randomly stop working. These Dell D510s have 4 USB ports and I am only using three. Not to mention that my devices are not exceeding the total power (mA) allowed for the ports.

How are the mice losing power so intermittently? What else can I do? I thought about reinstalling all the mice drivers but my D505 don’t have this problem and they have all the same drivers. What else can I do about this?

Part 2.

Problem number two is that my Latitude D510 are intermittently dropping off the network. These laptops all have the 2915abg Intel PRO/SET card. I have tested all the drivers provided by Intel. That did not resolve the problem.

I have gone into the adapter properties window select the Advanced Tab and under the “Property:” window scrolled and selected “Power Management.” I set a new Power Management setting from the default value to the highest value. (This sets the preference to maximum performance over maximum battery life). This also has not resolved the problem.

What can I do to make sure that these laptops stay connected? Why are they randomly dropping their connection?

Are these two problems connected in anyway? Can anyone offer me any assistance? I a m stumped. Are both these issues power management issues? Reinstallation of the operating system from scratch does not resolve this problem either.

volcano11 · Answer

Since this is the wireless network forum, I am only responding to your problem with wireless networking.   Do you have any sources of 2.4 Ghz interference in your vicinity, like cordless phones or microwave ovens?  If there is any chance of such interference, try changing the channel your wireless router uses to either 1 or 11, which should minimize the interference and perhaps fix the problem.   Steve

Gina Q · Answer

I'll give a shot to the mouse problem, but you may need to go and speak to the portable forum about this if what I suggest does not work.   If you have installed the drivers for the external mice you should uninstall all of them. Your original post leads me to believe that you may have done this. If not then you can stop reading and jump over to the portable general hardware forum.:smileywink: If you have however, installed these drivers go to Add/Remove programs and remove all mouse drivers, including the Alps touchpad drivers. Once this is done reboot your system and then download this  driver and install it (this is an XP driver I did not see any reference to which OS you have on these systems). Also, before installing the driver please remove all USB devices.   Once the driver is installed add in only the mouse (do not load the drivers for the mouse) and see if it works and does not disconnect. The touchpad drivers for the system should be able to handle the mouse. If the mouse is a multi-button mouse and you want to use those extra buttons it may not be possible depending on what happens here. We can discuss this after we make sure the mouse is working. Once you determine the mouse is staying connected then add in one of the other USB devices you're using. I'd try the easy one first the Keyboard. Is the keyboard Bluetooth or just a standard USB? If those two work together then add in the Scanner. Continue to do this and test after each device to see when or if the problem reappears. If all work then leave it this way. If you begin to have the same problem take out the last device added and see if the problem goes away.

Networking, Internet, & Bluetooth

Wireless Intermittently drop off and mouse randomly stops working

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