I am a technological black hole!

[Amber Williams]

So yeah...remember when I mentioned how my mouse was acting sort of odd?  Well lets just say things have gone from blargh to BLARGH.

Not 100% sure what is up. I ran AVG and spybot...nothing turned up.  I ran the c-disk scan. Nothing turned up.  I even did a system restore to a month back but nope. Nothing. The computer seems to completely not acknowledge that mice even exist.  (For note, I used two different mice: one being a usb wireless and the other being one I plugged into the mouse port in the back.  In both cases now, both are not showing up at all)

Between that, firefox acting wonky (it keeps eating my cookies everytime I restart or close the windows), skype causing issues...I am starting to wonder if I just suck when it comes to technology.  It's a good system, and its aggravating that most people I talk to keep saying I should upgrade the whole thing.

Cause really...between the immigration issue, I dont have the funds to pull that off and I dont have any interest in trying to rustle up funds cause I am kind of aggravated that every two months something seems to show up like this. It feels like I am running some sort of scam.

But either way...I am annoyed. And I am no longer able to use a mouse at all on my computer...making it pretty impossible to scan and colour tonights comic.  Luckily, my weekend is just happening which means I can hopefully find some resolution on Monday.

I just really hope it doesnt require me having to throw down $100 to buy a new copy of windows xp since I dont have one floating around right now.

Regardless, I am in a crummy mood.  Odds are Dmoon will be making note on the main page of the situation but I figured I'd go into details here. 

[Tapewolf]

At the moment, I feel like that too.  Have you tried plugging the USB mouse into different USB ports?

[Kipiru]

That's tough Amber, but don't worry about us too much. I don't think anyone will accuse you of running a scam, of all things.

[Jairus]

While I don't have mouse troubles (I don't use a mouse and am completely out of practice), I do have trackpad clicker troubles (there's like... one place on this two inch square thing that will work right), so I can sympathize. Sorry about your mouse problems. Unfortunately, aside from sympathies I'm basically useless right now.

[PinkKitty]

Yikes. =o.o=;;

Geez Amber, something out there just seems to not like you these days... I wish it would leave you alone. =x.x= Best try as Tapewolf suggested and try all the different USB ports for your mouse, and if that still does not work, try to see if you can keyboard your way into Control Panel to your Hardware Manager and attempt to have Windows re-install your mouse drivers...

I am just hoping the solution will be something that does not involve reformating the harddrive altogether as that could have your computer out of commission for a couple of days with all the program and driver reinstallations. =x.x=;

You still have a tablet laying around though, right? Try plugging that in to see if you can use that as a mouse too... I currently use my own tablet as a mouse because my old mouse freaked out on me and does not work anymore.

Best of wishes to you, Amber... I wish the stress bug would leave you alone and just let you relax!

[Tyranastrasz]

My old computer had a similar problem. I figured it was just the fact that the thing was nearly as old as me and was running on Windows ME, so I just did without it since I hardly used that computer anyway. Never did get it fixed... Anyway, I really hope that your computer doesn't go down the same path as mine did, and best of luck to you in fixing the problems.

That's tough Amber, but don't worry about us too much. I don't think anyone will accuse you of running a scam, of all things.

She's totally spent the past ten years making a webcomic so she could scam a couple hundred dollars out of people. Come now, Amber, even if it was a scam, I'd think you could come up with a better one than that in ten years. "Give me one hundred MEEEEEEEEEEELLLLYON dollars by 3 PM or Earzilla will destroy Seattle!!!!!!!!" type of thing.

[Noone]

Sounds like it's most likely hardware issues, but, there are a few things I can think of...
On Firefox: have you tried clearing your cache? If it's eating up cookies when you open/close windows, it might not have the space to store them. I don't know for sure, but if you haven't in a while, go to 'tools' -> 'Clear Private Data', Then select/deselect the said items. It doesn't sound like that is the definite cause but it might help.

Also, have you tried checking task manager to see how your computer is holding in the 'performance' section? There should be two fields, CPU usage, and Page File/Memory usage. If the Page File/Memory usage is too high, it can cause some... nasty things, usually dealing with slowdowns but may cause other functionality problems.

It sounds like it's a hardware issue though, I doubt inspecting the aforementioned things will fix all your problems but it might be worth looking in to.

[Jairus]

That's tough Amber, but don't worry about us too much. I don't think anyone will accuse you of running a scam, of all things.

She's totally spent the past ten years making a webcomic so she could scam a couple hundred dollars out of people. Come now, Amber, even if it was a scam, I'd think you could come up with a better one than that in ten years. "Give me one hundred MEEEEEEEEEEELLLLYON dollars by 3 PM or Earzilla will destroy Seattle!!!!!!!!" type of thing.

"Hello, Mason. Sorry for the delay, but Doctor Amber has decided that it's time for an early parole!"
"8.6."
"You kidding? She used third person! 6.5!"
"Bad hench-husband! What did I tell you about rating my intros?"

Cue Agent D. M. being sent out to take down the supervillain, only for it to be revealed that they are actually siblings, and D. M. is the white sheep of the family!

... um... heheh... sorry, felt like being silly.

[Sukasa]

About all I can suggest is that you go into Device manager and see if there're any reported problems with the USB hardware/drivers.

You may also find This helpful.

[Lego3400]

Also, if you've only been trying USB mice, try a normal, non USB mouse. Dunno if the still make em but it's a good thing to try out. Also... Did you check your mouse drivers? Something may have happened to them

[Amber Williams]

First off, yes I have tried other mice. I have tried multiple ports and different usb locations.  I admit I didn't go into the exact each and every detail of what all I have done because I have done. a. lot.

But now with no mouse whatsoever, I dont really have the hotkey knowhow...or more importantly...the patience and desire to keep trying for this evening. I am at the point where I just want to wait for Mason to come home and do it for me.  So while I appreciate all the advice...please keep in mind many of this is stuff that several people have told me already, I have tried many of them...and now I am at "I dont want to bother anymore" stage so I am not in the mood to keep trying stuff.

[techmaster-glitch]

Eeesh...a mouse problem is a pretty big problem. I hope you'll still be able to to the podcast thing tonight at least...

[PinkKitty]

Aye... Best just rest then, Amber... No need of stressing yourself out even more. =x.x= I am sorry if anything in my first post bothered you at all.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Heh.

I'm in much the same state, myself. I've just spent the last 24 or more hours trying to get the wifi network here in a usable state, after the Lenny release upgraped my gateway with ipv6.

Including bouncing to a new wifi card that doesn't have drivers that will allow it to act as an AP - something of a problem, since my gateway is, well, the AP for the network. And the router. And... yeah.

I'm almost at the point where I'm willing to splash out, get a nice bridge, and use a standard network card in the server instead.


The most annoying part is the server works fine when you turn all the windows machines off... *sigh*



... Sorry, Amber. Had to vent somewhere...

[Tapewolf]

I'm in much the same state, myself. I've just spent the last 24 or more hours trying to get the wifi network here in a usable state, after the Lenny release upgraped my gateway with ipv6.

I tried Lenny on the Eeepc by accident, last weekend IIRC.  It took twice as long as Xandros to boot, filled the disk with even more crud than Ubuntu, and only supported WEP which sensible people have been trying to kill off for the last 8 years.  I assumed this was because it was based on Debian 4 and therefore obsolete.  The horror came in the morning when I read the announcement and realised it was absolute latest release.

My personal grief at the moment is trying to get two tape decks to remain in sync.  It worked before.  It works on older synced recordings.  I just won't work on this one song for reasons I cannot explain.

While sacrificing a goat is not part of the usual repertoire of technical solutions to digital equipment failure, I'm running out of other ideas.  Maybe Amber should give it a go too.

(Maybe I should just get one of these)

[Turnsky]

First off, yes I have tried other mice. I have tried multiple ports and different usb locations.  I admit I didn't go into the exact each and every detail of what all I have done because I have done. a. lot.

But now with no mouse whatsoever, I dont really have the hotkey knowhow...or more importantly...the patience and desire to keep trying for this evening. I am at the point where I just want to wait for Mason to come home and do it for me.  So while I appreciate all the advice...please keep in mind many of this is stuff that several people have told me already, I have tried many of them...and now I am at "I dont want to bother anymore" stage so I am not in the mood to keep trying stuff.

this is along the lines of "stick a pin in it for later" but it might behoove you to back up everything you can (provided you get that mouse to work) and try to(read: get someone else to) cannibalize an interim PC together. Largely dependent on whether you have any space PC parts lying about, you folks may have already tried it, or not.

by the sounds of things, there's either something very wrong with the OS, Drivers, or the motherboard. the last of which isn't good at all. 

[Tapewolf]

Just one addendum - this is probably one of the better places for a break... if it had happened on 973 or 974 there would probably be death threats 

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

only supported wep? Since when? look into wpa_supplicant.

My main problem with it is trying to get a card that works under linux as an AP with wpa. Which is all fun. :-/

handful:~# df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1             3.7G  1.4G  2.1G  40% /
...

Seems perfectly reasonable to me. Somewhat less crud lying about than Xandros, and at least I can update, and remove, the packages. Maybe you chose a desktop install, with lots of other packages added?

[GabrielsThoughts]

if only Abel's a tiny bit different expression were different it would be perfect. Oh well.

[Naldru]

Some things came to mind when reading your post.  Although you aren't using a Wacom tablet, you mentioned that you once had one attached, although I'm not sure if it was to this machine.  Is it possible that it is looking for the Wacom tablet mouse instead of the normal USB mouse.  Sometimes software will try an automatic update without you knowing about it and try switching the control settings.  Did you try selecting the hardware pane for the Mouse control panel and hit the troubleshoot button?  If you have another keyboard, try swapping keyboards.

[e_voyager]

i feel your pain amber i truly do

[Attic Rat]

Sounds like a rough situation all around!
If you have another computer in the place, you can pull the hard drive from yours and set it as a "slave" in the other.
Then you can at least back up the files you want from it.

Then you can set the drive back to "Master" and put it back in your original computer. After that you can perform mad scientist-like experiments on it without any worries of losing your (backed up) files. Yay for that, anyway.

[Ted Schiller]

Dire Mouse (he's amazing. he's fantastic.) has saved Regina.  Yay, Dire Mouse.   

With regards,
Ted

[mopman]

Amber , I know nothing of computers except how to use one all I can offer is a zen hug 

[Jairus]

Dire Mouse (he's amazing. he's fantastic.) has saved Regina.  Yay, Dire Mouse.   

With regards,
Ted

All he has done is prolong the inevitable. Regina's fate approaches still...

[Kenji]

You sure seem to be living up to that "fae and technology don't mix well" standard.
There's that, if nothing else. 

[Tapewolf]

only supported wep? Since when? look into wpa_supplicant.

Yes, because I really want to piss around with that when I'm at an airport     (*)
I had to do it that way for AC2007, and it was no fun at all.  AC2008, I had the EeePC and it just plain worked.

For a fixed installation, yes, that's fine.  I do it that way at home.  For travel purposes, the GUI tools are what you want so you can get the thing set up quickly, and the ones which Debian ship do not support WPA. 

Seems perfectly reasonable to me. Somewhat less crud lying about than Xandros, and at least I can update, and remove, the packages. Maybe you chose a desktop install, with lots of other packages added?

Yes.  I might try it again later, but for now I've imaged it to back to Xandros.  Again.  Unfortunately.


* No, an airport probably wouldn't use WPA on its local net, but I'd still have to go in to disable it so that it could lock onto other networks.

[AmigaDragon]

So yeah...remember when I mentioned how my mouse was acting sort of odd?  Well lets just say things have gone from blargh to BLARGH.

Not 100% sure what is up. I ran AVG and spybot...nothing turned up.  I ran the c-disk scan. Nothing turned up.  I even did a system restore to a month back but nope. Nothing. The computer seems to completely not acknowledge that mice even exist.  (For note, I used two different mice: one being a usb wireless and the other being one I plugged into the mouse port in the back.  In both cases now, both are not showing up at all)

The last time (actually for the last year or two at least) that I've used my old Win98 laptop, any site I tried to log in to would act like I never gave a password, when I gave the correct one every time in Firefox.
If I can get past the keyboard error at POST (probably just reseat the connector), I'll be reinstalling Windoze on another HD (the old one is giving read errors). Even an old slow machine like that is good enough to run Winamp (streaming better music than the 3 local over-the-air staions) and Trillian to take some load off this faster XP machine. Running it overnight instead of the desktop will also reduce electrical usage, somewhere around 10-20 watts instead of up to 500.

----------------
Now playing on Winamp: Johann Sebastian Bach - Orchestral Suite No. 1 (Classical Minnesota Public Radio)
via FoxyTunes

[icarus]

honestly give driver detective (http://www.drivershq.com/) a try if you don't mind tabbing through it.

i'll even PM you my registration info so you can use the full version. i paid for it, i may as well get my money's worth by sharing.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

For a fixed installation, yes, that's fine.  I do it that way at home.  For travel purposes, the GUI tools are what you want so you can get the thing set up quickly, and the ones which Debian ship do not support WPA. 

wpagui, I think, is the package for gui additions. Mind you, I don't have a WPA network to go play on, otherwise I'd be looking into it - apparently the card I'm using in the AP supports it, it's just a matter of finding time to mess with it when the wife isn't trying to use the network :-/

Mind you, I'm a strange one. The debian install I've got on there has most of the gui tools stripped out, because I'm happier with a command line...

* No, an airport probably wouldn't use WPA on its local net, but I'd still have to go in to disable it so that it could lock onto other networks.

Yah. The airport isn't really the place to mess around, unless you're spending several hours lurking there.