I had my mouse stop working twice in one day and have no idea why. It is an optical mouse and it was as if it was disconnected. Luckily, the computer is a laptop and I was able to use the mousepad. I would have been stuffed if I was using a desktop computer.
I was able to shut the computer down OK the first time. Later in the day, the the same thing happened again but worse. The mouse worked OK for a while but then stopped working. Picked up the mouse, no light on the bottom. Had to use the mousepad on the laptop to move the cursor. Logged out of IIS, closed down Firefox. Tried to close down my email program and that's when the "fun" started.
I got error message after error message something about not being able to read a particular part of memory. Then after a few of those, I got error message after error message something about not being able to write to a particular part of memory. Sorry I didn't get any screenshots of the error messages.
I ended up hitting the power button which brought up a box of choices: Hibernate, Stand By, Shut Down, Restart. I clicked on Shut Down and haven't used that laptop since.
Any idea what is going on? I didn't bump the mouse connecter.
RAM or HardDrive by the sounds of it. Try reseating them both in their connectors, could hopefully just be a dodgy connection. If I get anything like this I normally pull out all devices, RAM, CDRom drives, Keyboard connectors etc etc and reseat them. Amazing how often this sorts the problem.
I take it the mouse is plugged into a USB port. Have you tried just putting it in another USB port. I have had mouse trouble at times and a change of port has fixed it then later when I have changed back it is OK. (did you feed it on the right sort of chese)
Sorry about the delay in getting back. I have a bad chest cold and have been slower than a turtle.
I have swapped my mouse for the one I use on my netbook and it seems to be going OK. Have had some problems launching programs from the desktop icon (have to launch from the start menu instead) but this is only sometimes.
I doubt the mouse is the issue, it could be overheating, or some type of hardware failure.
On power-up listen to check if the fan is working.
It could also be viral, download an anti-virus boot CD, and boot off it just in case. http://support.kaspersky.com/faq/?qid=208282173
Explorer crashed on me last time I logged into IIS (not IIS's fault). I couldn't switch between programs. Even though I had Windows Task Manager running at the time, the only way to bring it up was to hit <Ctrl> <Alt> <Delete>. Had to force close one program and the other ones closed normally.
Is the cooling fan working. That is a problem that catches me every now and then. When the computer is on my lap I tend to smother the fan vents. I don't notice until the computer does funny things and then stops.
Hi Barry, The fan works good. In fact I use the sound of the to alert me to problems. At the moment, it's running in short bursts to cool the CPU then turns off. When I have high CPU usage it runs flat out. If it doesn't go back to normal, that's when I start looking for what is wrong.
The computer is getting fairly old now ( XP it came with Office 2003). Maybe it's time to get a new one.
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