The respones time of the mouse on one of our machines starts getting slower (& very jerky) as time goes by while on the internet (it could be as more is downloaded, rather than the amount of time - my wife uses it, & hasn't been able to determine which it is). The only solution seems to be rebooting.
We are on dial-up, have a component system, intel SE440BX-2 motherboard, 400mhz Pentium chip, 192mg RAM(1 64MG,1 128 MG), ME operating system (upgraded from Win98).
I have tried switching the port (PS/2 & USB), switching mice, removing one of the memory sticks, switching memory stick locations, reformatting my hard-drive - nothing works.
Any suggestions?

dong, welcome, i also posted below yours (unstable mouse) i tryed everything, but do one thing though, while its in that state of jerkyness etc, click on ctrl/alt/delete, and while there see if the mouse comes back normal, then click out and see if it goes back to jerkyness thats what mine does, i have the basic (intellimouse p/s/2 compatible) we may have the same exact problem.

billy :confused:

dong,

Your point about the slowing down relationship with time spent on the Internet would initially invite me to consider a cache problem of some sort.

You might want to dump your Temporary Internet Files when this begins to happen and see if that clears things up. If you're set to dump your Temp files on reboot, and the problem is not then an issue early on while browsing...there might be a cause and effect going on here.

Just a thought! ;)

Hello dong

First I'd like to apologise for my imperfect understanding and the technical explanations I am about to attempt to give.

1. I believe the mouse is given a high priority IRQ and therefore always goes near the head of the queue when it sends a signal for processing.
2. Unfortunately, I think it uses a 16 bit program to do it's work [somebody please correct me if I'm wrong].
3. 16 bit programs all use the same common queue to place their messages in, must wait in the queue and cannot be processed untill the previous programme finishes its work and gives up it's processor usage to the next. This is called "Co-operative multi-tasking". If one of these programmes stops responding then nothing in the queue gets to proceed. Hence if some 16-bit prog was running and had been given a high priority IRQ it could force the mouse signals to wait untill it was finished and after a pause they would finally be dealt with. This would result in jerkiness of the cursor. If this prog hung the cursor would freeze.
4. The newer 32-bit programmes eliminate this problem because they each have a separate queue and "Pre-emptive Multi-tasking" is used.
This means that the operating system is in control and allocates a short burst of time to each, separate, queue going around in quick succession repetitively.

CONCLUSION
Some 16-bit programme with an IRQ of equal or higher priority than the mouse is getting in it's way.

SOLUTION
Use Ctrl+Alt+Del to close down one prog at a time and see which one is the culprit.
First go to
"Start>Programs>Accessories>System Tools>System Information>Software Environment>16-bit Modules Loaded"
and see if you can spot the likely culprit.

Whyzman,
Sorry for the delay in replying. I appreciate your imput.
I had already tried dumping my temp files & history. This didn't work, either. The only thing that does work is to reboot.
Any other suggestions?

Thanks for the imput. I am going to try your suggestion, but will need to set up a controlled environment, & since my wife is the one using the computer we're discussing, I don't know if a controlled environment is possible:)
I will keep you posted.

click on ctrl/alt/delete, and while there see if the mouse comes back normal, then click out and see if it goes back to jerkyness

This will not tell you anything, it is standard for the [Ctrl] [Alt] [Del] procedure. It temporarily stops EVERYTHING so nothing but video, keyboard and mouse are working. No matter what the problem is, the mouse will always work correctly while in this state, if it works normally after a fresh boot. I've even seen it work when it would not respond under normal operating conditions, ie frozen, blank black screen (extremely low resources). In that case it will only work inside the task window, but it's there and available.

dong,

One missing ingredient is the Harddrive...what size? Would you Double click on My Computer and then Right Click on the HDD and see how much free space you have available?

Also, since you have WinMe it would be wise to change the default setting for System Restore. Right Click My Computer>Properties>Performance>Advance Settings File System. Move the slider on System Restore from Maximum to the 200MB minimum. This will ultimately result in about 2 weeks of System Restore backups which should be plenty. This should help reclaim some disk space!

Also, have you defragged in a while?

How long ago did you upgrade from Win98?