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Hi
I am running a home-constructed PC (started out life as a Dell, but i had to replace the motherboard and - well, one thing led to another).

Asus A8N-E running NVidia nForce4 with AMD processor
Windows XP professional
Zone Alarm security suite

It's been working fine for a couple of years with the odd hiccup but i transferred to Zone Alarm from McAfee about four months ago, and upgraded to IE7 - security and fire walls seem to be a big part of the problems i've had in the past so i thought i'd mention it.

last week i had the "application error with winlogon.exe" error on log on and I couldn't boot at all. I did a repair install from the XP disk which *Mostly* worked, but now I have no mouse. I am having to tab through the browswer fields to even post this message which is incredibly frustrating!

Odd symptoms:
* IE has rolled back to version 6 (I guess that might be a function of the repair install)
* In the device manager there is NO "mouse and other pointing devices" entry, let alone any mouse recorded under it
* In the control panel, the mouse hardware properties are completely blank (no way of updating driver or getting more inform,ation - selecting the buttons does nothing)
* In Regedit the particular registry key that Microsoft says I should be looking for (at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/142405) which is HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/System/CurrentControlSet/Services/Class/Mouse doesn't even exist in the registry
* So I am thinking there's something at the BIOS level that's wrong m,eaning windows doesn't even know to look for the mouse, but most weirdly of all, when I reboot at hit "del" to enter the set up screen it won't let me - it just continues to load windows.

I have a bad feeling that there could be a virus involved with this - to access my work computer system remotely I have to switch off Zone Alarm, and I wonder whether something got under the radar. When I try to update Zone Alarm's virus scanner, it won't let me.

Any thoughts gratefully appreciated.
Cheers
Electric Ray

Most likely a bad mouse, or a bent mouse pin, or you are using one of those wireless mouse units, or a cheap usb mouse.

Mouse detection problems are exceedingly rare except for the above... never heard of a mouse being affected by a virus.

Uninstall Zone Alarm if you are using Internet Explorer 7.0 because you will always have problems otherwise.

the only thing that makes me wonder about this is that it happened without warning after immediately upon a repair install ... ie unusual coincidence that a mouse would physically break exactly when i had completed an install... also no phyiscal reason for it do to so (not like i dropped it into my coffee or anything. I will pop down the shop and buy a new mouse and try that out and report back.

Thanks for your attention

I had a worse problem, after some days i was in holidays i came home and my keyboard, my mouse and my speakers didn't work. When i plug in the mouse,keyboard and speakers they have power but they dont work!