Hello, I myself am pretty damn computer literate, however I would never ever claim to be smarter then anyone else here. Especially since I am begging your help now!
Win98se
Duron 700
128 meg ram
30gig HD
DVD
CDRW
Video card TBA
A couple of weeks ago I found my mouse curser would freeze where it was on the screen (using standard MS drivers, no mouse software on system) it would still be moving, i.e. it would highlight items as i moved it around though the curser itself stayed in one place. I would then have to reboot and it would freeze on shutdown… after manually shutting it down it would most often freeze on reboot as windows loaded… after restarting again it would sometimes come up to windows but with no video drivers, just 16 color driver (not in safe mode)… I would change that and reboot and many times It would come back up and work alright for awhile when the mouse curser would freeze again and everything repeted.
I immediatly suspected a bad video card. I purchased a new, better video card and was having the same problem.
I ended up doing fdisk and partioning and reinstalling windows98se. It worked fine for awhile and then the same damn problem started happening… mouse freezing and video crashing…
Two things which can cause strange, yet bizarre, behavior are excess heat generated by the CPU, and an insufficient power supply. It has been my experience that an over-heating CPU often causes problems which appear to be graphics-based; one indication of this might be that the problem doesn’t appear until after the computer has been on for a while, then everything goes to hell. You can try opening the box and running it with a fan pointed at the innards and see if stability improves; if so, you might need to invest in a good (or better) fan/heatsink.
A power supply that does not provide enough juice to power everything in your box could also result in some odd behavior. How many watts does your current PS output?
Try disconnecting the mouse before you turn on the computer. Try running windows with the keyboard, all the keys can control it. It’s a drag but you’re only checking to see if its the mouse & check for IRQ conflicts.
Per your description of the problem freezing mice, beyond video issues, generally points to bad memory DIMMS or an overheating CPU. Try removing and re-socketing your DIMMS or checking BIOS memory speed configuration(s).
Are there any specific applications which are running when this occurs?
Did anything change on the system around the time this started happening, such as new software or drivers?
If you start the system in safe-mode, does the problem occur? If not, temporarily disable any startup utilities or applications and see if that makes a difference.
Is your hard disk full? If the disk is close to full, and the swapfile gets to small, this can lead to the system acting flaky. Some systems start to act strange if the available free disk space falls below 100MB.
Off the top of my head, it sounds like the video driver, but I would check these other things too.
also check your BIOS for an option to reset the configuration data (aka clearing the NVram) if its not in the bios then there will be a jumper on the motherboard to do so.
I wouldnt suspect an IRQ conflict – the system is pretty damn good at keeping stuff off the same IRQ as the PS2 ports (assuming PS2 mouse) – I’d be considering the heat and the memory
also, sense you formatted and the same issue came back its either
A) a hardware issue
B) software that you shortly there after reloaded
On the Macintosh, a very similar behavior is caused by a certain combination of the video card and its drivers with the new optical mouse. The recommended solution was to increase the mouse tracking speed (the speed at which the mouse cursor moves on-screen when you move the mouse itself).
Check settings for mouse and video card/driver. After all, the combination of those is what draws the mouse-arrow on your screen.
Good advice, but just as important is the CPU>heatsink interface. Remove any advesive material from the face of the heatsink and invest in a tube of thermal compound ($6 or less at most computer stores). Apply a small amount at the point that the chip meets the heatsink and you’ll get a dramatic decrease in CPU operating temperature. You’d be surprised how many system builders leave this out. Even a mediocre heatsink will show a good boost if it is allowed to do its job properly. But why buy a mediocre one for $10 when you can get a really good one for $20 or less?
I just built a Duron 900 and got in a hurry and couldn’t find my paste but thought I could at least get Windows2000 loaded while I went and looked for it. I kept getting an incredible number of errors during repeated attempts at installation, even though the cover was off the case and I thought it would be cool enough in the meantime. I finally gave up, bought some more paste and put the CPU back together. Shazam! No more installation problems.
OK… update time. It happened to me again this afternoon. Taking the memory advice I installed a new 128meg dimm along side the existing one. I made sure the cpu fan was working and left the computer side off. Tonight I turned the machine on and after about a half hour or so it happened again. I shut the machine off and unplugged it and immediatly felt the heatsink all the way to the base, it was not even lukewarm, very cool. I went ahead and removed the previous 128 meg dimm and just left the new one in. We’ll see how it goes I guess.
Just for kicks try a USB Logitech optical mouse. Their driver set is better than microsoft’s and it’s a fantastic mouse. You can return it if it doesn’t solve the problem.
astro… havent used safe mode long enough to try it out.
[sub]funny you should mention logitech[/sub]
BTW… The logitech software only suppliments the microsoft drivers for things like additional configuration and more then 2 buttons and scroll. They do make the BEST products in the world however. USB might be an interesting thing to try though.
I missed if you tried this – did you run msconfig (start, run, msconfig, click okay) gone to the startup tab, and removed every checkmark on the list? This disables the majority of the TSR’s and programs that load in the background for windows…would help narrow down a software problem
Just for kicks try a USB Logitech optical mouse. Their driver set is better than microsoft’s and it’s a fantastic mouse. You can return it if it doesn’t solve the problem.
kinoons, yup, tried that the first go round… no change. Since then I’ve partitioned, formated and reinstalled win98 and currently have NO downloads on the system. …well… SOME porn… but not much.
