Serial Mouse Will Not Work! 1

[Najemikon]

Here's an interesting little dilemma for you...

I've been building PCs now for years & the other day tried to resurrect one of my first Pentium 120s for a friend. She's never been near a computer & just wants one to mess about with.

Now this machine used to work fine, running Windows 98 on a hard disk of about 2gb (oh the good old days!). But when I fired it up, it won't detect the serial mouse; got the usual "There is no mouse on your system- plug one in now or go away" message. The COM ports are detected fine, but I finally concluded that they were the problem. Rather than mess about, I stuck a spare ISA serial port card in & put the mouse onto that.

Now Windows detects the mouse. I know this because I don't get the message, but I do get the pointer. Only, the pointer won't move & the buttons don't get a response either.

I'm pretty stuck at this point. Windows gives no error at all & truly believes a fully working mouse is attached. I've tried other mice & that one on another PC, where it works fine. I've also tried a complete format & reinstall of Windows. Ater it had detected the add-on serial port card, the pointer appeared during setup, but still wouldn't move!

Any ideas would be much appreciated...

 

[TyrantSSV]

I think you have possible resource conflicts between built-in ports and ports on add-on card. Try to disable built-in ports and look what happened.

 

[Najemikon]

Yeah did that! I thought conflicts too & it was an issue, but I cleared it. It made no difference, which is when I tried my reinstall, but disabled the ports in BIOS first. The next thing I was going to try though, is adjusting the address on the serial port card (done by jumpers) to try & move it to a different position.

 

[ceh4702]

i Have used serial mice before.

I think it can only be one of 4 things.
1. The serial mouse is bad. Could be a bad wire to the mouse device or to the plug. Mouse device itself may be bad.
2. IRQ Conlfict. May show up on another device so look at a list of all IRQ's.
3. Need a better driver.

It is helpful to try another mouse to see if that is the problem, because it helps to rule out possibilities.

4. It is also possible that the Serial port has been disabled in the BIOS to free up an IRQ.

I have found serial mouse to be a pain, and you are better off not using a serial mouse.

If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.

 

[Najemikon]

It sounds cheesy, but on this forum, the only bad post is the one that isn't made. Gawd, did I just say that?

Thanks for your suggestions; I have been trying other mice with no success. I've tried them on another machine too to prove they work. IRQ conflicts I think is definitely cleared up, but I'm certainly going to check. It's surprisingly difficult to navigate windows with no mouse, so it's more than possible that I missed it! Driver wise, the Windows 98 basic driver should be fine.

I agree that serial mice on the whole are a pain. Years of conflicts with modems has convinced me of that- I once had a machine that could use the modem or the mouse, but never both & didn't have enough IRQs to free them up! Unfortunately this machine is quite old now & doesn't have PS2 or USB as alternatives.

 

[Win98User]

The trick with navigating without the mouse is using the tab key(to move between applications and chioces), Enter Key(to select), arrow keys(to naviagate and expand).

But whilst, I am here; Is this the same mouse you used to use on this system before it went into storage.

BTW, no cheesy puns please when talking about mouses (or mice if you prefer). ;-)

Regards.

 

[Win98User]

Oops, meant to add some examples of navigating;

When you manage to open the system Icon the "system information" will be outlined - TAB until "general" tab is outlined - Then use right arrow key to select "Device Manager" - Then TAB twice to get to computer in the window - Then use down arrow to get to "mouse" - Then use right arrow to expand - the down arrow to select your mouse - Then TAB to properties - Press enter to Select - etc. etc.

Regards.

 

[Najemikon]

To be honest, I'm not sure if it is the same mouse. Oh & it happens to be the ddevice manager I hate navigating around. You move onto the device you want to see properties of & hit ent...whoops! wheres the manager gone?

 

[Win98User]

Hi,
I would hope by now that you followed the instructions I gave previously.

The reason that the Device Manager is disappearing is because you haven't tabbed out to the "properties" button.

Remember, when you navigate down the list with the down arrow, you then need to use the right arrow to expand the device selected so that you can then down arrow to your device. At that point you need to TAB (to get to the properties button) and then enter.

Regards.

 

[Najemikon]

Sorry I haven't been back to you on this guys! Finally have an update...

I finally came to the very constructive solution of "Sod it"! This was because I found the bits of another old PC of mine. A P133 with lots more RAM so I thought that that would be the better bet.

It already had Windows 98 on it & a fully functional mouse. It also had a lot of rubbish on there & as I was building it for someone else, I decided on a complete reinstall. Whoops. Back to square one. The mouse does not work. Exact same fault as I originally reported only now on an entirely unrelated PC! And one, I stress, that was quite happy to use the mouse before. The ONLY thing that links the two units is the Windows 98 CD. Is there a possibility that a particular version of 98 had problems like this? I feel daft just typing that...

I've never had anything like this before. As bare a machine as I can get it, with a standard install should find a serial mouse & use it with no problem whatsoever. Sure, I've had problems before adding modems- soon as you get a connection to the internet, your mouse freezes, etc, but I've always solved it (conflicts of course), but what helped is that I could rely on the PC in its most basic state.

Looks like she's going to have to learn those shortcut keys!

 

[crisc]

Maybe you could scavange up a USB card and throw a USB mouse on it? Don't know if they have PS/2 cards, but that might be a way around the problem as well..

 

[Najemikon]

Now that's a good idea...

Ta! I'll look into that

 

[Najemikon]

Well, well, well. Threaten it with one good solution & up pops another.

I decided to have a look in the BIOS (for the seventh time) & in a moment of crazed desperation, messed around with the IRQ settings something chronic. I'm usually loathed to do that ever since I ruined a PC with one click of 'Reset to BIOS defaults'! There was nothing to ruin on this one though, so- Reserved for ISAs all disabled as I haven't got any ISA cards to put in; reserved for PS2 mouse taken off because thats the problem (no PS2!); Com2 I don't need, so that came out & a few other bits that I had no clue about!

Anyway, result. I've found nirvana- The greatest thing in the world ever is seeing a mouse pointer move.

Ok so that's a bit far. Especially as it doesn't explain why those BIOS settings were fine on the old installation. I'm confused, but I don't care! Me mouse works.

Thanks everyone for your efforts. In the end, it was the old conflict problem, but where? How? Why? These questions will forever hang over this PC...