Mouse locks up computer

This is weird. On my wife's computer (Compaq SR5000 with Vista Home Basic) she was complaining about the mouse acting weird. So I took the ball out and cleaned the rollers, reassembled and replaced. Seemed to work fine. Now the computer won't boot unless you remove the mouse altogether. I tried another mouse--same result. Plug either mouse in, boot the computer, and the screen goes blank right after the boot sequence starts. No beeps (POST codes), just a black screen. Unplug the mouse, boot the computer, and it starts right up. Actually I think it starts right up even when the screen is black because a) you can hear the hard drive whirring away, and b) if you stop it by holding the power button down until the light goes off, then re-start without the mouse, it takes you to the abnormal shutdown screen, like it does after a successful boot and manual (improper) shutdown. I think that switching to a USB mouse might fix it, but would rather not spend the $$$. Any ideas?
eh?
Keith

 

A new USB mouse is under $10 and in my opinion, $10 is well worth avoiding the constant PC restarts and mouse problems. Just save the recp't so if the USB mouse doesn't work, you can return it. Have you tried uninstalling/reinstalling the Windows mouse drivers? How about using the built-in System Restore feature? Or the built-in Vista repair feature? I had a Compaq PC mouse port fail for no good reason; I bought a new generic USB mouse for $6.99 and never looked back....