XP Re-install problems.

[AlanHo]

A friend brought his desktop computer round yesterday to see if I could solve a growing problem.

It is a 4 year old Fujitsu Siemens XP machine with an 80 GB hard drive, 1 GB of RAM on board graphics and audio.

The problem is that it suddenly refuses to respond to mouse clicks - just sits there and ignores the mouse whatever you do. The computer had a Logitech wireless mouse and keyboard which I have swapped for wired ones - trying both PS2 connections and USB - but to no avail.

Sometimes upon booting the computer will respond to mouse clicks on desktop icons - but not on the icons in the quick launch task bar or notification area. Sometimes you can open a window like task manager OK - but then it will not allow you to select an item or action it. Sometimes you can load and use a programme like Word with no problems - when out of the blue the mouse is again ignored. It is most strange.

I first tried doing a sytem restore back a few weeks when he claims all was OK - no better.

I then backed up his computer to a spare external hard drive and tried a Windows repair from the CD. This made no difference

I then reformatted the C: drive to NTFS and reinstalled XP from scratch - but interestingly on the first attempt it would not respond to a mouse click when asked to select language and keybord type etc. After a couple of further attempts I got XP to install but when the window opened to enter a password for the user name it threw up an error message about not recognising the domain (I think - didn't make an accurate note of the exact message).

Now when I reboot - the user icon appears with the window to insert a password - but the mouse is not recognised

I have just finished reinstalling XP all over again from scratch - with the same result.

I am baffled.

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

Is it a USB mouse or PS/2 mouse?

Have you tried another mouse, on another port if USB?

[AlanHo]

A friend brought his desktop computer round yesterday to see if I could solve a growing problem.

It is a 4 year old Fujitsu Siemens XP machine with an 80 GB hard drive, 1 GB of RAM on board graphics and audio.

The problem is that it suddenly refuses to respond to mouse clicks - just sits there and ignores the mouse whatever you do. The computer had a Logitech wireless mouse and keyboard which I have swapped for wired ones - trying both PS2 connections and USB - but to no avail.

Sometimes upon booting the computer will respond to mouse clicks on desktop icons - but not on the icons in the quick launch task bar or notification area. Sometimes you can open a window like task manager OK - but then it will not allow you to select an item or action it. Sometimes you can load and use a programme like Word with no problems - when out of the blue the mouse is again ignored. It is most strange.

I first tried doing a sytem restore back a few weeks when he claims all was OK - no better.

I then backed up his computer to a spare external hard drive and tried a Windows repair from the CD. This made no difference

I then reformatted the C: drive to NTFS and reinstalled XP from scratch - but interestingly on the first attempt it would not respond to a mouse click when asked to select language and keybord type etc. After a couple of further attempts I got XP to install but when the window opened to enter a password for the user name it threw up an error message about not recognising the domain (I think - didn't make an accurate note of the exact message).

Now when I reboot - the user icon appears with the window to insert a password - but the mouse is not recognised

I have just finished reinstalling XP all over again from scratch - with the same result.

I am baffled.

Pat - I have tried a PS/2 and a USB mouse - using both the available USB ports - but it seems to make little difference.

I was especially baffled when the mouse was not recognised during the XP instal procedure when asked to choose the language etc. The screen froze after I clicked the mouse on the drop down menu and I had to abort the install. It did this twice in succession.

[catgate]

I think if you were to download one of the Linux live disks and boot up from that, you would be able to determine if you were playing with a hardware or software problem .