Missing mouse pointer!

[Tiretool]

My father-in-law has a home built computer with Win98 and asked me the other day what he should do about a missing mouse. I asked him what he meant and his reply was "The mouse pointer disappeared!" Anyone got any clue as to what I might tell him? He's having to navigate through his computer with the Tab and Enter keys. He's changed mice and tried to re-install drivers but he's quite computer illiterate and I don't live close to him. (He lives in Denver, CO and I live in Georgia).

Any pointers? (Sorry )

[highrisemech]

First of all make sure it is plugged all the way into the port.
Usually the mouse or serial port is disabled in the bios
it just has to be set to enabled. I bought a 486 last week at the flea market it even had a cdrom. mouse was disabled in the bios it took me all of 5 mins to fix it. Mouse is detected during boot up.

[StJoDennis]

First off, you have my understanding concerning working with a computer novice. I have a similar situation with my dad. By the way, I live about 5 minutes from him and it doesn't make things much better. Based on my experiences with Dad I would suggest that he probably went into Control Panel, found the Mouse category, and started playing around with it. You can browse through different mouse pointer styles there and he may have chosen one that doesn't show up on his display. That probably won't help, but it might be worth a try.

[highrisemech]

It is kind of difficult to get into device manager without a mouse although it can be done with the keyboard but this is not necessary.
You will not be able to find the mouse in device manager if the port is disabled in the bios. If enabled it will appear once widows boots just like magic. Same is true with usb port mouse as long as the usb port is enabled. I'm not sure about logitech mouse I know they require thier own driver but I would imagine that it to would have to be detected during boot up in order to install the new hardware. I would just like to add tomake sure the mouse is plugged into the correct port many times people will mix up the keybord and mose ports since they look the same.

[PMich]

If worse comes to worse, it may be worth a few bucks to buy a USB mouse or at least an adapter and try to connect via USB.

Otherwise, you may have to give him instructions to get to device manager and check for presence of the mouse (You may have to snail mail screenshots and instructions or email if he can navigate without mouse).

I would try what highrisemech mentioned first, though.

I doubt if he has things plugged in incorrectly or he wouldn't be able to use keyboard either (I think?).