Newly Surfaced Problems

Main problem:
My mouse. I have no idea what's wrong with it. The sounds I hear lead me to believe it's some sort of software problem but some occurences suggest it may be a hardware problem:
My mouse freezes up occasionally, accompanied by a certain sound: Two beeps, one lower than the first followed closely by two more beeps, one higher than the first. I have an MS 5-button optical mouse, and I have tried turning off intellipoint software and many other processes but the problem still occurs. It occurs more frequently while playing games. At one point, the mouse froze and did not unfreeze, and a warning message said that a USB device has malfunctioned.
Is my mouse dead? Is there an obviosu problem I might be missing? I have no clue at this point.

Secondary problem:
I was playing a game and it suddenly became very choppy. The activity light on my computer turned on. I quit the game through task manager guessing that it was the problem, but the activity continued and the computer remained choppy. Task manager listed no process that was taking up an inordinate amount of RAM or processor power. Should XP itself have done anything like this at any point?

 

mice

Can you try a ps/2 mouse? A standard two button, load no software, type a thing? Prolly usb connection faulty on back of puter?