As often happens, a customer tells me that the computer locks up, but can’t quite give me a good indication of how, or under what circumstances.

After some probing, it appears that its the mouse that is actually locking up (customer is not sure, as they use the mouse for most things, and the keyboard is only used for obvious things like emails and documents).

Since the problem is intermittent, I cannot see the problem first-hand.

So I resume asking more questions, and I find out that it only locks up at “startup”… and to fix it, the computer is reset… Occasionally, the PC needs a second reset, before the mouse starts working properly.

I also find out that once the PC starts correctly, and the mouse is working, it never freezes during that session…

The next day, I was in the same office (for a different problem), when I had the same problem.

XP starts correctly, the keyboard works, but the mouse doesn’t.

It feels like the mouse isn’t plugged it, yet I can see the LED light underneath.

So I start tracing the mouse cord, and I find it goes into a green USB to PS2 adapter.

The mouse is USB & its plugged into the PS2 plug via the adapter.

I’ve never liked using these green adapters, unless there just isn’t enough USB ports.

So I plug the mouse directly into a USB port (there were 3 empty USB ports), and the problem never happened again.