My Husband uses an emachine for his antique Engine Building Company. It has Windows 98 on it and I’m using it right now to access this site. He also uses it to run an Engine Building program he has, which runs in Dos. He's having a minor problem with the emachine and it has to be sent back to the company to be fixed, which will take two weeks. Just to hold him over till he gets his emachine back, we loaded the Engine program on an old 486SX that has Windows 3.11 on it. Our problem is that we can’t get the mouse to work in Dos. I downloaded a driver from the Internet directly to disk (via this emachine) that will allow him to use the mouse in Dos, but I can’t get it to install in the 486. I’m not sending the emachine back till I get this 486 set up right so can anyone help me out? I think I’m just lacking some basic installation knowledge. I appreciate you help!

patty, your best bet is to download a generic mouse driver - one of the microsoft serial mouse ones usually work for most mice (?). you can download it from this site: http://www.driverzone.com/dsp3.msql?id=83&cat=6&pass=microsoft it's the first file at the top of the list of files. once you get it downloaded, unzip it to your c:\dos directory, and add this statement to your c:\autoexec.bat: c:\dos\mouse.com easy as that! this driver will work for a ps/2 mouse as well. incidentally, if you're using a ps/2 mouse, try a serial mouse instead, if you have one, and see if that works. another thing you can do, is type "msd" at the dos prompt; when the screen comes up, look on the right-hand side at "ports", and it will tell you how many you have. it's a good idea to plug the serial mouse into the first port you see; if that doesn't work, try another (if there is one). james

James,Thank you so much for responding. I have one last question. I'm working with two computers. The one I need the driver for does not have Internet access so this download will not be direct. I can only access the Internet by way of my emachine, so after I unzip the driver to my Dos directory on my emachine how do I transport the driver to the 486? Thanks again.

James, please disregard my addition question above. I thought my way through the problem and by applying your expert advice I now am able to use my mouse in Dos. You are a peach! Thank you sooooo much!

patty, glad to have helped ;o) happy computing! james

Patty I hope you have your problem solved before you get this, but if not I will send you a Dos Mouse installation program. Windows 95 has its own mouse driver, but it will not work in Dos (same with Win98)Let me know if you still need it. Takes about 2 minutes to install and because it is in your Autoexe.bat it loads every time you turn your computer on.

James, I also did what you said for Patty and it works. Thank you John