h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Over the past few months my computer mouse has become more and more prone to freezing up, sometimes concurrent with the computer beeping at me, so I decided to go through Windows' troubleshooting doodad. Advised that the drivers might be corrupted I uninstalled the mouse, however it did not automatically reinstal.

Help, now I have no working mouse at all, just a pointer sat immobile in the middle of the screen. I tried reinstalling it manually, but I couldn't find mice on the list. Then I tried turning the computer off and back on again. That didn't work so my technical knowledge is now exhausted.

Unless you have a spectacularly advanced mouse, you shouldn't need any drivers for it. The PC should recognise it on bootup, just like the keyboard.

While you work it out, you may find mouse keys useful, basically it uses the numpad to move the mouse about. i can't remmber off hand what the shortcut to turn them on is though.

You may find that helpful for tasks like selecting links on a webpage, as pressing tab for your link is hell.

Yeah, I've found Mouse Keys now. Very useful.

Dr EV - Well my computer is doing a very good impression of not recognising the mouse.

Is there anything special about it, or is it just a bog-standard mouse? Do you have another one you can try?

Bog standard. No, sorry it's the only one.

The beeping would seem to suggest something more serious than just a dead mouse. I presume you've tried cleaning it and that the ball isn't clogged up with filth?

If it's a wireless mouse, try changing the battery on it. If it isn't wireless and uses a USB port, perhaps it has become slightly dislodged from the connection port - I've had that happen before.

- JD

I had this happen once and I went through hoops trying to fix it. it's amazing what you learn about how the keyboard works when this happens.

In the end, it turned out that we needed a new mouse

I suspect I did need a new mouse, but just at the moment I'd be happy to get back to a mouse that freezes up and beeps at me, as the computer won't even admit to having a mouse attached to it. I don't know if a new mouse is going to solve anything now.

JD - none of the above.

Orcus - say, is there a quick way to select desktop icons just after starting using the keyboard? See, if I can do that I can completely ignore the mouse on the computer at work and stick it somewhere out of the way.

The tab button is useful as I remember, you can move the highlighted icon around using further tab hits or the arrows and enter will select things. You can even use menus, takes a bit of practice but it can be done.

easy route as far as i remmber.

press control and esc, this opens up the windows menu, but in a differnt way to the windows key.

hit esc, then press tab, you will cycle through.

start button icon, quicklauch (if u have any) the windows in the task bar that are minimised, and the icons on the desktop.

jsut stop pressing tab when you reach the area you want then use the arrow keys as normal.

correction, windows key works fine for the task, i seem to remmember that it didn't highlight the start button before

though you have to press esc after opening the menu, pressing the windows key again dosn't work (perhaps thats why i thought it didn't work?)

It's working! I went to the manufacturer's website and downloaded new drivers. As a bonus I have a new program called iWheelWorks 7.64, which appears to do sod all.

What Is - That's been my method, except Alt+Tab cycles backwards and gets there in one step. Work computer is a crap setup, it's running UNIX through windows, so you have to log on twice and you only use the mouse to start the UNIX thing. Oh, and it's got a paranoid security system that makes you change your password every so often because otherwise someone might be confirming deliveries using your account instead of their own and then what have you got? Anarchy, that's what.

Thats good news... when I first saw this I thought it was a rodent emergency. Had a lot of dead mice in my time... sadly. Now I chose rodenty pals who a little more long lived.