Intalling a serial mouse in windows XP

I cant seem to get windows XP on my brothers computer to detect a serial mouse from my old computer.

My brother only needs to print out work documents every morning before work, so he doesn't need anything great. He just wants to a functional mouse. Windows XP is not detecting it however.

I've tried going to control panel and clicking on add hardware to scan for it, but nothing.

Is this even possible on a machine running xp?

 

Try powering off and then powering back on (not a re-start).

 

another thing would be to check out the BIOS settings and make sure that theserial ports are enabled... different boards have different default settings as to wether or not they are on or off

 

Thanks for the quick responses...

I tried powering on and off and it didnt work.

Tried to go to Bios settings. The serial port is enabled. The settings say the following:

Base I/O address: [3F8] other options ( [2F8], [3E8], and [2E8]
interrupt: [IRQ 4] Other option ([IRQ 3])


there are no conflicts I can see. Should I change these settings?

 

With all do respect why dont you go and buy an optical mouse that connects to the "ps2 port", or the "usb port" they are usually not that expensive.

 

lol, cuz im stubborn and I was convinced I had a working mouse. I guess the effort is not worth it.


I think I might just buy one, since I gotta shop for a keyboard as well.

-thanks all