XP SP3: USB mice do not work on laptop?

[daedal]

I've recently 'downgraded' my laptop from Vista to XP. While I've managed to get most of the drivers up and running, I've discovered a very strange problem. USB mice do not seem to work.

I've plugged in three mice so I've determined it's not a simple problem with the mouse or the USB port.

For example, I plug in a Razer Diamondback. Windows searches for drivers. It works for 2 or 3 seconds then simply stops. The mouse is still light up and receives power, but the cursor does not move. When I plugged in my Logitech S10 keyboard & mouse combo, the keyboard worked great but the mouse did not.

The trackpad on the laptop, however, works just fine. I've tried installing drivers for the Razer but it did not resolve the problem so I'm assuming the same would occur with the S10 drivers.

The laptop is an HP DV7-2044CA running Windows XP Pro SP3.

Help me out here, folks! I don't know what to do!

 

[daedal]

I have it working for the time being. I went into the device manager and uninstalled all USB controllers then scanned for hardware changes. I'm hoping this won't be a recurring problem on every reboot or every time I swap mice.
[EDIT] Scratch that, something else popped up looking for drivers and once it was done, I lost my mouse. Grr.

 

[Electrofreak]

EDIT - This post was made before I saw your second post... definitely sounds like a device conflict... you should be able to find out what got installed through the Event Viewer (under Administrative Tools). Once you figure out what it was, the mouse should work once you disable the device and plug it back in...

First, make sure you don't have a trackpad on/off button (on my HP it's right above the trackpad) that might be disabling other pointing devices when enabled.

If that doesn't work, go to your Device Manager. (Right-Click My Computer, Properties, Hardware tab, top button).

Make sure you've got under Universal Serial Bus controllers that you have at least one USB Root Hub and one USB Universal Host Controller driver installed. You should probably also have a USB2 Controller in there too.

If you've got the USB drivers all in place and they don't have any issues, go underneath Mice and Pointing Devices and remove the Razer drivers you've installed. Leave the trackpad drivers in place. Unplug the Razer, reboot the computer, and after Windows is finished starting up, plug in the mouse. You *should* get a detection and driver install in your Notification area. If you don't try doing a manual install through Add/Remove Hardware of an HID-Compliant mouse. That should at least get the pointer moving, even though all of your buttons may not be supported (I don't use a Razer so I don't know)

If that doesn't work, you might have a bad USB port... maybe try another?

 

[daedal]

I check the Even Viewer but couldn't really find anything in particular. I'm beginning to think my Microsoft mouse driver may be messed. I mean I unplug the mouse and move it to another USB port. It gets detected properly as a Razer Diamondback, works for about 2 seconds then stops when the drivers are done installing.

Man, I don't even know where to start. It should work.

The USB keyboard works fine, as do memory sticks but if the driver was corrupt or wonky, I don't think it would work at all -- not even the two seconds would it?

[EDIT 1] I've noticed that the mouse sits in the "Human Interface Device" section rather than under "Mice and other pointing devices".

[EDIT 2] Apparently, this is not unheard of in versions of XP that have gone through Nlite. Maybe I removed something I shouldn't have, but I was pretty careful.

 

[daedal]

Well, I fixed the problem by re-creating an NLited copy of XP without removing any of the fluff and it worked perfectly. I'm assuming I had removed one thing too many.