Mouse has stopped working

[Martin963]

For some unfathomable reason the mouse on my wife's computer has stopped working.   It was fine yesterday.   Windows XP started up fine this morning but the mouse had absolutely no effect on the position of the cursor.   I've tried using a USB connected mouse (the normal mouse is via the green din-type connector) and although the red light on the mouse comes on and the computer initially says it's found a new human interface device (but then adds there's a problem with it) we still have no joy.

Several forced unplugs later (no idea how to stop it safely) we're no further forward.

Any help gratefully accepted.   But it's difficult to do much without a mouse to point with.

Thanks.

[Martin963]

Update - well more by luck than judgment or indeed skill I've managed to get into the system restore menus and - again more by luck - reset things to how they were two days ago.   Which has brought the mouse back into full working order.

Avast is just now doing a deep scan with ZoneAlarm locking all internet activity,   just in case it's some sort of malware.

But if anyone has any thoughts I'd still be very grateful.   Thanks.

[Martin963]

Further update;  Avast found 13 infected files,  all of which it has dealt with EXCEPT

trz8.tmp

Is this likely to be serious?   It doesn't seem to be able to move it to the quarantine chest and it "postpones" attempts to delete it. 

Has anyone any thoughts on this?

The only thing that has been installed on the machine recently is Publisher 97.   Given that Avast is always convinced that Word is a threat I wonder if there's a degree of exaggeration going on here.....?

[Martin963]

Spoke too soon.

After Avast there was a boot scan (?) which deleted several more suspect files.

Restarted and the mouse is again frozen.

What is worse is that I can no longer perform system restores.   They all fail.

I think I need to buy a new computer.....

[Quillan]

If your running Vista or Windows 7 you can try and repair the operating system. To do this change your BIOS to choose the CD/DVD drive as the first drive to attempt to boot from. Place the Vista or W7 CD/DVD in the drive then reboot your computer by 'Shutting Down' then powering on as opposed to a restart.

[woolybanana]

When my mouse failed a little while ago, the mother board was busy giving up the ghost.

[NormanH]

[quote user="Martin963"]Spoke too soon.

After Avast there was a boot scan (?) which deleted several more suspect files.

Restarted and the mouse is again frozen.

What is worse is that I can no longer perform system restores.   They all fail.

I think I need to buy a new computer.....

[/quote]

Just download Xubuntu  12.04 iso to either a CD or USB stick, and it will re-format your disc and you will have a stable lightweight and quick system...

But we have discussed this before [:)]

[Martin963]

Tee hee Norman.   Yes we have.

Curiously enough I have an ongoing point-scoring system with my geeky-friend (the one who persuaded me on to Linux) and yesterday morning I was ahead after get_iplayer in Linux downloaded 8 episodes of Nigel Slater's cooking programme overnight,  but in the case of three episodes only recorded 25 or 20 or 10 minutes.   Geek-friend swore blind that this was impossible but the evidence is there on my hard disk.

So imagine my disgruntlement when Windows and its mice fell over that very afternoon.....!

What we may end up doing - and you'll like this Norman - is to replace the broken computer (if it can't be fixed easily) with a Linux one (as my wife doesn't need to do anything that Linux can't do) and also get a cheap Windows laptop for the things that we still need to do in the Windows domain.   I really could do without the expense at the moment (post Foncieres and pre Habitation) but needs must.

I have to tell myself my first computer in 1996 ish was £1700 for a 1 GB HDD and a 75 MHz processor....

Thanks Quillan - I think the recovery stuff is on a separate partition on this computer but it comes to much the same thing.   Geek coming later today.

What it may be is that we installed Microsoft Publisher on that machine earlier in the week and I suspect that something has gone adrift as a result.   Can't uninstall it at present due to not being able to point at anything with the ruddy mouse.

[Martin963]

And another point scored for Norman's team....:

I've just found my "run-Linux-off-a-CD" disc and it's loaded up on SWMBO's machine so at least she can get on with her correspondence.

AND we know that the mouse problem is Windows-related and not a hardware issue,  as it's pattering about the screen with renewed enthusiasm....

[NormanH]

" get_iplayer in Linux downloaded 8 episodes of Nigel Slater's cooking

programme overnight,  but in the case of three episodes only recorded 25

or 20 or 10 minutes."

There are  a 2 possible reasons for that happening

1) Get iplayer has 2 ways of downloading, one by flv streamer, the other by rtmpdump.

flv streamer tends to keep stopping and when it restarts it doesn't 'top up' the file that has already been started, but sees it as corrupt and just fails

rtmpdump usually downloads all in one go and so is not susceptible to this

You don't in fact need both

Make sure in software center that you have rtmpdump installed and up to date

2) When you want to download a list of programmes you give the numbers of the ones you want separated by commas

174, 589, 123  etc

Some times by the time you have downloaded a couple the programme number has changed with the passage of time (it is not constant, but continually updated as new programmes become available)

This means you have to refresh the list of programmes and re-reference the numbers.