At least once a week and sometimes oftener the mouse arrow is frozen in mid-screen and machine has to be rebooted to free it. I have let it set for up to an hour before rebooting but it never frees itself. Is this a failure in the mouse drivers, etc. or something running in background?
No it doesn’t.
Boy, I love these great debates!
Seriously, that has happened to me several times and I’m not sure what causes it. Most times XP starts responding again after a short while in my case. I did an upgrade instaed of a clean install so that may have something to do with it.
This was a new machine with OS installled by supplier and CD stil in sealed wrapper. Also look at thread re Automatic Updates.
All windows OS’s have several processes running in background. With a P-IV at 2.6 GHz and 512 MB SDRAM it should finish most tasks quickly.
I have no idea. I’ve used XP Professional for over a year and never had this problem.
Maybe it’s not really happening. (After all, do how do we know you’re not hallucinating?)
Just trying to turn this into a debate. 
Maybe I’ll get Karen Kenworthy’s programs <karenware.com> She has one “Power Tool” which tells all programs running.
Moving this to GQ.
What type of mouse is this? I have heard of some MS Explorer mice that have had some defects in the wire just as it exits the plastic body. Other than that I don’t know how you are going to isolate a problem like this that is random unless it happens each time you open a particular program. I would just go to Device Manager and delete the mouse and uninstall the drivers. Reboot the computer and let the OS rewrite the drivers upon detection. Its painless and might help.
Does the keyboard remain responsive when this happens (if you press the windows key, does the start menu open)?
Keyboard and mouse are logitech wireless keyboard with an optical mouse.
Windows key brings up start menu.
Keyboard will allow shutdown via arrow keys & enter key.
I have a notebook with xp home, and three other computers (2 desktops and a notebook) with xp-pro. The XP home notebook does this once in a while, and I dont’ know why. The other three computers never have a problem.
In my case, nothing is responsive when this happens. No keyboard input, nothing. It absolutely needs a restart to make it work.
It doesn’t act temperature related, because it’s so random, and doesn’t usually happen evenwhen I’m being bad and blocking the fan intake with my leg. I’ve had it shut down spontaneously to prevent overheating on occasion, but it’s never seemed to lock up due to temperature.