Disappearing mouse
 

Running ME on a Compaq Presario. Everything's fine. Shut it
down one night and the next day when I start it up there is
no mouse pointer to be seen on the desktop. Also, the
display changed to 16 colors and the lowest resolution. I
can TAB through to the controls settings and change the
display properties back to where they were but then on
restart they change back. I can see the mouse (and use it)
after I boot up in the safe mode. The PC is 4 yrs. old. I'd
trash it, but I need to get my photos off 1st. And in the
safe mode, it won't let me move the photos to a CD. Any
suggestions? Thanks so much!!

First suggestion - Assuming you've done nothing else since the problem
started (except what you have described) AND it happened fairly recently
(past few days) then run System Restore and roll-back to the last time/date
when things behaved normally.

See if that helps before you need to worry about recovering your photos.

Mart


"EJ" wrote in message
...
Running ME on a Compaq Presario. Everything's fine. Shut it
down one night and the next day when I start it up there is
no mouse pointer to be seen on the desktop. Also, the
display changed to 16 colors and the lowest resolution. I
can TAB through to the controls settings and change the
display properties back to where they were but then on
restart they change back. I can see the mouse (and use it)
after I boot up in the safe mode. The PC is 4 yrs. old. I'd
trash it, but I need to get my photos off 1st. And in the
safe mode, it won't let me move the photos to a CD. Any
suggestions? Thanks so much!!

Thanks Mart. I'm not real computer savvy, so could you
please explain how exactly to run "System Restore". I did
make an "emergency disk" when I first purchased the PC
using Compaq's recovery CD. I tried to boot up the computer
using this (when the PC's off, I placed the floppy in the
"A" drive and then started up the PC... is this the right
way?) but when I do this, I see the following message on
the monitor "non-system disk. replace and then press any
key" So I'm wondering, what good is this "emergency disk"??
Unless I'm not doing something correctly. Last night, I
went to Compaq's site (difficult to do without the use of
the mouse I might say!) and downloaded any driver updates
that were available for my model. That still didn't help. I
do know the last date that my system worked correctly. I
just don't know how to do the restore function. Could you
walk me through it? Thanks a million!!
-----Original Message-----
First suggestion - Assuming you've done nothing else since
the problem
started (except what you have described) AND it happened
fairly recently
(past few days) then run System Restore and roll-back to
the last time/date
when things behaved normally.

See if that helps before you need to worry about
recovering your photos.

Mart


"EJ" wrote in message
...
Running ME on a Compaq Presario. Everything's fine. Shut it
down one night and the next day when I start it up there is
no mouse pointer to be seen on the desktop. Also, the
display changed to 16 colors and the lowest resolution. I
can TAB through to the controls settings and change the
display properties back to where they were but then on
restart they change back. I can see the mouse (and use it)
after I boot up in the safe mode. The PC is 4 yrs. old. I'd
trash it, but I need to get my photos off 1st. And in the
safe mode, it won't let me move the photos to a CD. Any
suggestions? Thanks so much!!


.

EJ, as you are able to boot into safe mode (and use your mouse) you can
either navigate to System Restore as follows :-

Start | Programs | Accessories | System Tools - System Restore (icon)

or

Let Safe Mode continue setting itself up until it settles in the Help
Console. Halfway down the page you will see the System Restore option.
Select and run it.

"Description of the System Restore Utility in Windows Millennium Edition"
http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;267951

Mart



"EJ" wrote in message
...
Thanks Mart. I'm not real computer savvy, so could you
please explain how exactly to run "System Restore". I did
make an "emergency disk" when I first purchased the PC
using Compaq's recovery CD. I tried to boot up the computer
using this (when the PC's off, I placed the floppy in the
"A" drive and then started up the PC... is this the right
way?) but when I do this, I see the following message on
the monitor "non-system disk. replace and then press any
key" So I'm wondering, what good is this "emergency disk"??
Unless I'm not doing something correctly. Last night, I
went to Compaq's site (difficult to do without the use of
the mouse I might say!) and downloaded any driver updates
that were available for my model. That still didn't help. I
do know the last date that my system worked correctly. I
just don't know how to do the restore function. Could you
walk me through it? Thanks a million!!
-----Original Message-----
First suggestion - Assuming you've done nothing else since
the problem
started (except what you have described) AND it happened
fairly recently
(past few days) then run System Restore and roll-back to
the last time/date
when things behaved normally.

See if that helps before you need to worry about
recovering your photos.

Mart


"EJ" wrote in message
...
Running ME on a Compaq Presario. Everything's fine. Shut it
down one night and the next day when I start it up there is
no mouse pointer to be seen on the desktop. Also, the
display changed to 16 colors and the lowest resolution. I
can TAB through to the controls settings and change the
display properties back to where they were but then on
restart they change back. I can see the mouse (and use it)
after I boot up in the safe mode. The PC is 4 yrs. old. I'd
trash it, but I need to get my photos off 1st. And in the
safe mode, it won't let me move the photos to a CD. Any
suggestions? Thanks so much!!


.