Faulty serial mouse.

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Problems with a serial mouse killer.

This article is about the problems recently experienced by a friends computer. The computer in question is quite old and I received a call from my friend saying she was having problems with her mouse, it was jerky and erratic and the buttons were not working correctly.

My first thought was the mouse ball was fluffed up, but a quick clean made no difference, I then checked it was plugged in okay. Well that killed it completely, Windows now claimed no mouse was fitted, the mouse had also disappeared from the device manager.

So I thought either the mouse or the PS/2 to serial port adapter was faulty, so I substituted the mouse off my computer and restarted in safe mode, still not detected.
Next step was to buy a new PS/2 to serial port adapter, this will do it I thought. Alas Windows still refused to detect the mouse.

By now I was running out of ideas, looking on the web for advice was not very helpful, mostly lots of mentions of serial mouse problems, but no cures.
I thought I will try our local shop, I explained the problem and the owner suggested various things that I had already tried, but then he suggested using a proper serial mouse rather than a PS/2 one with an adapter, he said there was a considerable difference.
I must admit I was rather skeptical, but as the mouse was only five pounds and the shop keeper said I could return it if it didn't work, I thought nothing ventured etc.

Well I plugged it in and fired up Windows and hey presto the mouse was back to normal, in fact it was much better than normal, it had always been a little sluggish and prone to false clicks, but now it was responsive and a pleasure to use.
So if you are using a PS/2 mouse with a serial port adapter and find it poor, I would recommend changing to a proper serial mouse, it may enhance your computing.

One final thing, with the mouse disabled it is tricky to use the computer if you are used to constant mouse control. But a virtual mouse is available under Start -- Settings -- Control Panel -- Accessibility Options -- Mouse.
The virtual mouse can be set, to turn on with the keyboard shortcut Left Alt + Left Shift + Num Lock and this allows the keypad to be used to control the mouse pointer, with / * - used to choose the mouse button and 5 to press it, it is slow, but better than having to use the keyboard and it can be tweaked under the settings for better performance.