Missing mouse on laptop???

[bobfrance]

Hi Guys,

Whilst attempting to speed up my girlfirends laptop last night I managed to make the mouse disappear. So now she only has the touchpad.

After numerous complaints that her Toshiba Satellite A10 (on Windows XP) was runnning painfully slow (it was). I sat down and did all the usual. Ad ware/Spy ware/virus scans, ran windows updates, deleted junk, de-fragged the drive etc. None of which seemed to make much difference.

After pondering I went onto the Toshiba website and found loads of downloads and updates for that particular model. Which was good because I'd inadvertantly deleted the sound card driver (Doh!).

So after running a few of these updates it asked for a re-boot, which I did to find that the mouse no longer worked.

Looking at the control panel it tells me that the mouse drivers are still installed and it is still working fine.

So two questions:

How do get the mouse to work.
and
How do I speed the machine up?

I'd like to re-format and start again, but the flakey CD drive makes me wary of this and the GF says she has too many important emails on it (aaagh!).

All suggestions greatly appreciated.

Bob.

[Jinx]

USB or PS2 mouse? If the former I assume you have pulled it out and put back in again (my laptop sometimes "loses" my mouse so I just do the above and it works again). If the latter (or theabove doesn't work) have you tried "rolling back" the drivers?

[bobfrance]

It's a USB one. I tried unplugging it but no joy.

System restore was turned off (I know!) so I'm not sure I can roll back the drivers.
I get the impression it is the same mouse driver it always was (it's a Trust moust which apparently needs no drivers - just runs through XP).

Is it possible something has disabled it?
Bearing in mind I checked under mouse options in the control panel.

[leorest]

Try uninstalling the mouse and then letting the OS reinstall it when you next plug the mouse in!

[Marc W]

Have you tried plugging it into a different USB port in case its the port thats failed?

[bobfrance]

Aaaagh!

Still no joy!

I'm about to commit laptopicide.

So far I've tried:

Downloading mouse drivers from windows.

removing any recently installed software/drivers.

Going through every setting imaginable.

Checking the USB ports work with a different device - they do.

Trying the mouse on a different PC - it works.

I'm truly stumped.

And I've been told I'm not allowed to format the little b*gger.

Please somebody give me a ray of hope!

[CommanderJameson]

Is there a control panel, specific to the brand of laptop, that allows you to select the touchpad or an external mouse?

[bobfrance]

There are touchpad options under the mouse section of the control panel but there isn't anything regarding mouse/touchpad selection.

I seem to remember an option that said something like "Automatically swich to mouse if one is connected" but I haven't been able to find it - it may have been on another laptop.