Hi, I am running xp pro. I recently added an 80 gig Maxtor HD that came w/ a pci ata133 card. Well shortly after I had that working my mouse (ms optical intellimouse explorer 3.0) would stop working from time to time...it'd be fine then it would just not respond for a couple seconds, then work for a short while, then no response. Sometimes it would cease to work at all. I tried other mice on my computer (old compaq scoll mouse ps/2 and the wireless explorer mouse *usb*) and they work ok, and the mouse that acts up does the same quirky stuff w/ the ps/2 adapter (i use it in usb port). I'd say the mouse is bad, but I tried it on another PC for a while and it was just fine. I had since totally disconnected the new HD and am using the computer as I had it before. I've also reinstalled xp on a clean formatted drive and it still does this. I then noticed that when the mouse shoots craps, it has a blinking icon in the taskbar w/ a green arrow, here's a screenshot: http://www.geocities.com/methodman10304/mouse.JPG & http://www.geocities.com/methodman10304/mouse2.JPG (this one is zoomed in) Does anyone know what this icon is??? IS the mouse just dead? Thanks in advance. Cheers, William

I have the same Maxtor card, and had some similar issues. You may have an IRQ conflict. Have you checked IRQ's in Device Mangager? You might also try changing the Maxtor card to a different PCI slot, as some share IRQ's and this could conflict with your mouse or something. Your BIOS might show which slots share IRQ. The icon in the task bar shows up on my machine for my USB ZIP drive. It is a convenient (according to MS anyway) way to safely shutdown removable storage devices so you don't lose data by unplugging them at the wrong time. I don't know why your mouse would cause this to show, except for the aforementioned conflict possibility. Regards.

Hey thanks for the reply. I checked before and the card is/was on irq 5 all by itself. I am currently using my computer basically as it was before getting the Maxtor HD and its running a bit funky, and the mouse is still crapped out. I'm pretty sure by now that it is the mouse, but I'll test more when I can. Thanks again, William

Re your problem with mouse .Remove your mouse driver and reinstall same. It will probably reset itself and find an area in memory which does not conflict. Good luck. Others had this problem and solved it this way.

tried that as well :( I've done any basic troubleshooting anyone could try I believe, just gonna call MS and get a new mouse and see what happens...thanks for the idea though. I've tried the xp drivers and the updated drivers, neither work. Disgusted, WIlliam