Drivermax - BEWARE

On two occasions - last month and just today, I decided to update my Dell GX260 drivers with Drivermax. I like this program, although it struggles to be intuitive. Which is to say that instead of an easy one to ten walkthrough, you have a bunch of things to do that you simply have to educate yourlself on sequencing.
That said, the program works pretty well - EXCEPT - that they throw in the odd rogue driver (unsigned by Intel, even though its for an MS function) that screws everything up. I checked with the Dell update page after my first misadventure with Drivermax and the download that stuffed my mouse cursor wasn't listed there. Hmmm. Nevertheless, optimist that I am, I had another go at Drivermax today and bingo ... history repeated itself. This time it was the cursor again, not disappeared this time, but paralysed. Luckily I was able to escape by fitting my MS USB mouse with a PS2 adaptor and - it worked !! Hooray. But the everpresent danger is for all these automatic upgraders is that they try overcuteness in giving you what even the manufacturer can't, with a result like mine.
My question however relates not to what happened, but what could have. In other words, how would I have been able to negotiate around my screen without a working mouse? Is there some way of patching the keyboard or mouse from another PC into one that has a nonfunctioning mouse?
I'm avoiding driver replacement like the plague for the moment, but this sort of thing is bound to happen again, so please somebody smarter than I am suggest a way out.

 

Always get drivers from manufacturer's site, or a trusted site. And always make sure it matches up. In some cases where the original drivers get screwed up you can use third-party drivers but don't use one unless you absolutely know its safe.

 

Yeah, thanks, Halo, it's been an interesting exercise that could have been catastrophic. I'll certainly stick to Dell's downloads in future. I totally agree with you that usually old drivers work just as well as the newer ones and what is running okay shouldn't be tampered with. Thanks again.