Freezes when mouse is moved???
 

My friend was having problems with his computer constantly freezing. It would start up and a few seconds later would freeze. I could access a few things, but generally once I moved the mouse so much, it would freeze. This problem didn't happen in safe mode.

I formatted his harddrive for him and attempted to reinstall Win98SE. However I am still receiving similar lock-ups during installation. Everything would be going fine in installation, but if I move the mouse, it freezes. I continued to install without moving the mouse at all to see if the problem would go away, but it didn't. I tried formatting and installing again, but it continues freezing. Any ideas on why this is happening and how to stop it?

Have you tried a new mouse? It's possible that the mouse has a physical defect that is giving a faulty signal, which in turn causes the freezing. Or, alternatively, the mouse port is broken in a similar fashion. If a new mouse doesn't work, you can try a USB mouse.

That's all I can think of.

Definitely, try a USB mouse if it's an available option. I had a machine with the same kind of problem, and I switched it to a USB mouse, and the problem went away. Turned out someone had broken the PS/2 socket in the motherboard, and it was sending bad singals when the mouse was moved around, causing intermittent freezing. New mouse, new port.

I'm pretty sure the mouse and the PS/2 socket are fine. I was able to move the mouse around fine when i was in safe mode.

EDIT: The BIOS screen also recognizes when there's no mouse plugged in, so the socket is working fine. I'm using a mouse from a computer that I had laying around and it worked fine on that computer.

The computer seems to freeze not only when I move the mouse, but usually whenever the arrow appears. When installing WinXP/98 and the arrow appears, it either freezes right away or after I move the mouse a little bit.

sounds like it could be a bad mouse driver. but now I'm confused cause you mention a problem when simply installing winXP or win98.

remember, just cause the mobo recognizes that there's no mouse doesn't mean the socket is totally fine. strange machines these computers are.

I don't know though. One of your problems is indicitave of a hardware issue, the other a software issue. Check the driver and uninstall if necessary, letting it be replaced with the windows driver upon reboot, and like moose and johnny said, try another mouse or USB mouse.

I tried another mouse, same results. I don't have a USB mouse, but I tried installing Win98 w/o a mouse plugged in. It still froze moments after the mouse appeared.

I asked another friend of mine, and he says the RAM might be bad. I don't have any spare RAM chips lying around and don't feel like taking a computer apart. Think there's a chance of the RAM being bad? It's an IBM computer PIII, if that helps.

Well, really anything could be wrong.

Though I don't see any reason that the RAM would cause this problem specifically. If the RAM were going to cause it to freeze, the fact that it happens when the cursor appears doesn't make any sense.

However, you could try it anyway. Does the computer only have 1 stick of RAM in it? You could switch them out if you had more than one.

But the most likely explanation (in my opinion) is some sort of motherboard issue. It could be the PS/2 port, or it could be something totally different. An acquaintance of mine built his machine, but when he was doing it he snapped off a capacitor by accident. The machine worked fine some days, and others it was really shaky. Physcal motherboard issues cause lots of quirky little problems.

Another possibility... is it overheating?

This doesn't seem too likely, but if it takes roughly the same time to boot up, and roughly the same time for things to heat up, then it would probably freeze at about the same time every time if it was overheating. Your processor fan might be burnt out, or something along those lines. If your motherboard has a built in thermometer, then you can check the CPU and case temps, usually through BIOS.

Eh. That's what's coming to mind right now. Hope it helps a little.

There's no built in thermometer, but it takes just as long to boot up as any other PIII I've seen, so that can't be it. It sounds like it could be something with the motherboard. I only had it for about two days and supposedly the computer occassionally (though rarely) worked.

Thanks for the help, but I think I'll just give it back to him tomorrow. He was thinking about getting a new computer anyways so it's not too big of a deal. He'll just have to get one sooner. Told him to have Best Buy repair it for a good laugh. See what they diagnose the problem as.