To kill a mocking mouse

Here is my latest rant against Microsoft: they cannot make their own hardware talk to their own software! The case in point: the Microsoft Comfort Optical Mouse 3000.

I got one of these at work several months ago to replace an archaic ball-mouse that Dell surprisingly shipped with their dual-core desktop in this modern optical age. Microsoft mouse. Microsoft Windows XP. Doesn't get more compatible that this, right?

Wrong, but of course.

Everything was hunky-dory for a while. Then, all the windows fell apart (pardon the pun!). It started with Windows disowning the mouse. But in these early stages of the disease, the mouse would be recognized almost immediately.

"Ka-plink, Ka-plink" would go the speakers. Once for un-recognizing the mouse, and once for recognizing it again. Both in the span of less than a second. I did not give it a second thought.

And then there was only one "ka-plink". You can guess which of the two operations was being performed. The mouse had been surgically removed, and the device went dead. A balloon window helpfully asked me to click for more info. What irony! The only solution: unplug the mouse and reattach. But then, that "helpful" balloon went away too, and I could not figure out the cause.

Some Gooling revealed a plethora of potential issues, most requiring the creation of a recovery point in the operating system, accompanied by much fiddling with the dreaded Registry. I decided to wait and watch.

Eventually, the pointing device simply became so sluggish that a hard reboot was the only way out. This was getting too annoying now. I tried with another device of the same make and model, with similar results. I tried different USB ports. No luck.

A colleague then suggested that I install the original IntelliPointer drivers. The CD proudly proclaimed: "Do not plug in the device until you have installed these drivers." Great! How do I navigate the install program's menus, without the mouse plugged in?

Throwing caution to the wind, I plugged in the mouse and installed the driver. I then tried to download the updated driver from Microsoft's website, and was shunted about endlessly. Apparently, their driver download page works only with IE 6 or higher. Poor me, I had FireFox!

I eventually stumbled upon a page that condescended to work with FireFox, and I got version 6.1. In a few days, I should know if this was all in aid of something.

Santa, are you listening?!