This is a new Optiplex 380 running XPPro. With the orginal mouse the on- screen pointer would scroll up and down, or go off at a different direction on its own. So we checked the mouse settings and changed to default. But the problem persisted, so tried a new mouse, new mouse pad, switched usb ports both front and back, with no luck.

Called Dell Tech support-  first chat << that was waste of time<< as we were told to restart  -press F12  - and choose Boot to Utility Partition from the Boot Device Menu, except that there is no such option only 4 - the 2 drives/system setup/diagnostics-  Clicking on Diagnostics does not bring up any menu choices just starts some very rudimentary test which ends with no errors found.

So we then tried phone- when asked to start the computer in safe mode - we found that there is no way to do that using F8 key - F8 only brings up one choice  - Win XP - the only way to boot to Safe mode was to start normally and then bring up msconfig and select boot in Safe mode in MSCONFIG << Is this now the new norm? I wonder how we will boot this pc to boot up if something gets corrupted, and of course the problem could not re-created, so the tech suggested that we re-install the OS. I mean how ridiculous can you get, we are supposed to re-install the OS to fix a minor problem. And what if it doesnt  -re-install again

We purchased this pc with a 3 year hardware warranty, which I normally skip for 40 odd other Dells I have purchased over the last 7 years. The Dell phone Tech tells that the mouse problem is not an hardware issue but software related, and therefore not covered by the warranty, but he cant tell us which software. This is a work computer used in a responsible way.Apart from the Dell preinstalled software, I have added only the bare minimum reader/7zip/ftp/firefox/AV/CAM . I even uninstalled the CAM software, put in a video card, with no luck.

Any suggestions would be welcome.