Serial Mouse in XP

Have helped a neighbor upgrade from an old PC to a less-old notebook (Toshiba 4260), which is OK for her (Internet/email) needs.

I installed Win XP Pro on the Toshiba and everything works fine, except the old Microsoft serial mouse. It moves the cursor left and right but not up and down - the buttons work OK. The mouse thingie built into the keybrd works fine.

Device Mngr shows no problems in the Mice/Pointing Devices, and there is a driver installed for Microsoft Serial "IntelliMouse" (but I'm not sure if the mouse is an Intellimouse) - it's just an old fashioned 2 button serial mouse.

If I plug in a PS/2 mouse it works OK. The serial mouse worked perfectly on the old PC (running XP) and that Device Mngr was also using the same MS serial Intellimouse drivers (mouclass.sys and sermouse.sys).

Anybody got any brilliant ideas on why this serial mouse only moves in a horizontal direction. The obvious soln is to upgrade the old mouse to a new PS/2 or USB 'wheel' mouse - but as much as anything I'm curious why the old mouse is miss-behaving.

 

Have you uninstalled this mouse from the device manager, rebooted and let XP redetect it?

May need to uninstall the Intellimouse software and let XP use the default software for it.

 

You should try checking inside the mouse..... for dirt, small objects etc...

 

Thanks for the suggestions.

I uninstalled the serial intellimouse driver and then let XP reinstall it during the next boot - but there was no change and the serial mouse still only works left-right and not up-down.

Curiously I noticed that before XP re-installed the serial mouse driver I could still use the serial mouse but as before it only worked left-right. Therefore the serial mouse driver is really having no effect!!!??? - so I guess the old mouse is being controlled by some other way (perhaps something to do with the way the mouse thingie in the notebook's keypad is being driven).

Logically considering the symptoms you would think one of the rollers inside the mouse is gummed up but I have checked and everything inside the mouse is fine - and the mouse works perfectly on the older PC.

 

It sounds to me like you have a defective serial mouse. Inside the serial mouse are (2) sensors, one sensor goes up and down, the other is from left to right. It sounds to me like one of the sensors connected to the rollers went bad. You might want to try and fix it. If you have no luck fixing it, good luck trying to find a brand new serial mouse. I looked everywhere when I tried to buy a serial mouse. I went to staples, officemax, officedepot, best buy, circuit city, etc. No one carries the serial mouse. Fortunately there is this one company that still sells the serial mouse You can purchase this serial mouse brand new from them and it works very well.