Point32 and M$

Recently I installed the Intellipoint software/drivers from M$ on a Win98 box. My firewall told me point32.exe wanted to communicate with MS$, I said no. Couldn't think of any good reason my mouse needed to speak with M$. Couple of days later it tried again and again I said no. Bizarre. Yesterday it tried again, this time I made a rule, point32.exe would not be allowed to communicate with the Internet at anytime on any port for any reason. It promptly stopped working, mouse works but nothing controlled by the software, forward and back buttons, not even the mouse control applet will open even after reboot.
My mouse is being held hostage, how do I keep from paying the ransom?
This box:
Amd XP 1600
Asus A7V333
ATI Radeon 7000
M$ Intellpoint Optical mouse
Win98

 

wow, that is most intriguing... I wish I had an answer for you, however, I own an MS mouse and use the intellimouse drivers for it and have never had this issue that I can recall.

 

I believe that the intelipoint software may have an automatic update built in. That may be what wanted to communicate. Look through there and see if you can turn it off.

 

but why would it cease functionality like that?

 

who knows, I think the best bet right now to fix it is to go and download the latest version from MS and install that, paying attention to any autoupdate settings.

 

It was the latest version as of last week and I saw no auto update feature. I uninstalled it and put 2K on that box like it should have had in the first place and solved that problem. Still strange.