Mouse drivers missing...

Okay, I come home from college for Spring Break, and my mom's computer isn't working. Big surprise, really. Anyways, it's running Windows ME, and it was having mouse and display problems when I came home. Basically, the display was stuck at 640x480x16, and no matter how many times you changed the display settings, all it would do is ask you to restart the computer to apply the settings, and upon restarting, the settings would still be at 640x480x16. After a bit of searching and lots of restarts, I found that removing the display adapter in Device Manager and restarting the computer fixed that problem. Upon restarting, it reinstalled the display adapter and monitor, and all is well in that respect.

For the mouse, it simply wouldn't move. I tried reinstalling the Logitech MouseWare, but that didn't work. I uninstalled the MouseWare, and plugged in an older PS/2 mouse (also a Logitech, but "Made for IBM", so it's pretty generic) and restarted the computer. On reboot, it said that the following files were missing:

• lmouse.drv
• lmouse.vxd
• lmul.vxd

After the next restart, it would not boot up completely. Any time I try to boot into normal mode, it brings up the "It is now safe to turn off your computer" notice, and then shuts itself off. I can, however, boot into Safe Mode just fine. I have found a replacement "lmouse.drv" from a website, but could not find the other two (also, I have not placed this file onto the computer yet). One last thing: I do not have Windows ME discs for this computer. IBM in their great wisdom decided not to include them with the system.

Any suggestions here?

 

Okay, I booted into Safe Mode and created a Startup Disk for the computer. Rebooted with the Startup Disk to command line, and extracted the missing files from "C:\WINDOWS\OPTIONS\CABS\base2.cab". I think I failed to mention before that in my "C:\WINDOWS\system.ini" file there were two incomplete lines:

• [boot]
• mouse.drv=
• [boot.description]
• mouse.drv=

I used "edit system.ini" at the command line to change both of these to say "mouse.drv=lmouse.drv" (which is what I think it was before). I have restarted the machine, and it boots fine into normal mode again!

The bad news is, that even after reinstalling the Logitech MouseWare for the optical mouse, I can't get the mouse to work again. Any suggestions for this remaining problem?

 

Also, on the most recent reboot, an error message popped up when Windows finished starting up:

That isn't the exact error message, but it's close. "EM_EXEC.EXE" is the MouseWare program. The computer just finished defragging, so now I'm waiting for recommendations.

 

Exact error message:

Just clearing that up.

 

*checks in* Anyone, anything yet?

 

Since you are using Windows Me, then you have the ability to use System Restore.

 

System Restore and formatting are the last things I want to do to this computer. It's my mom's computer, and she neither understands nor accepts reasons for computer malfunctions. Before doing a System Restore, I would have to back up her files for her, because she would, invariably, fail to do so correctly and ask for my help anyway. The same for my older brother's files on the same computer. Long story short, it would be a big hassle for me. The work involved in actually fixing the problem is also a hassle for me, but it makes for a lot less involvement on their parts save for inquiries of "Is it fixed yet?"

 

System Restore isn't like doing a complete reinstall (Though there can be issues with loosing files that are placed outside My Documents and created between now and when the last System Restore Point was created)

Another solution could be to reset the hardware configuration, and let Windows redect everything. Will require that you have drivers ready.

But if you are into simple things:
- What happens if you install the Logitech MouseWare drivers in safemode ?
- What happens if you remove all ghost device from the device manager in safemode ? (Could start with the mouse-input-devices and the display adapters)
- What happens if you check for spyware/virus in safemode ?

 

Actually, I've found out that System Restore is currently disabled on this computer, so that is not even an option anymore. Resetting the hardware configuration is most likely just as bad, or worse, than System Restore/Formatting. This computer is 5 or so years old, and I have no idea where any drivers disks for it would be at this point.

For now, I've uninstalled the MouseWare again, and shut down the computer. Then I plugged in the old, standard PS/2 that I used earlier and turned the computer back on. It freaked out when trying to find the mouse drivers at first, and I pointed it to the Logitech MouseWare CD (since that's what it asked for, oddly enough), even though it was meant for the optical mouse that was being used before the whole problem began. The older mouse is working, but in Device Manager, the mouse device has a yellow exclamation mark icon on it, and it states that one of the drivers is not working properly. I assume that this is because the driver being used was not meant for that specific mouse, but they are both Logitech, one is just a few years older than the other. I'll go back to getting the optical mouse to work after I run a full suite of spyware and virus checks in safe mode. I'll post an update after that.

 

Okay, reran preliminary scans and such. Here are the results:

Preliminary Scans


CCleaner
- normal

Ad-Aware
- 14 objects related to CometSystems found and removed

SpyBot
- 1 object (StarWare) found and removed

CounterSpy
- many objects found and removed
- Onflow, BrowserAid, BrowserAid.Startium, PowerReg Scheduler, Spyware.SearchAssistant, CasinoOnNet


Running scans again after updating...


CCleaner
- normal

Ad-Aware
- 1 negligible object found

SpyBot
- Nothing found

CounterSpy
- Files:
- Kazaa (175), WhenU.WhenUSearch (1)
- Registry:
- Download Accelerator Plus (30), Go!Zilla
- WhenU and Go!Zilla Quarantined, Kazaa and DAP ignored

CWShredder
- Nothing found

Kill2Me
- Nothing found

McAfee AVERT Stinger
- Nothing found

HJT
- Scan with Log

The computer is still disconnected from the Internet. I'll attach the HJT Log.


EDIT: Also, I tried to run Windows Update a few times, but each time it failed when it would resume on restart. I ended up giving up in favor of cleaning spyware off the system first. Anyway I can clear out the IE6 SP1 Setup files so I can start the update from scratch later?