Crazy Mouse

I

Idoitall

New Member
I have an older IBM 600E laptop that we use in the den for card games, some email, and browseing. Not fancy or new, but it's perfect for this since it is small, light, and cheap. I'm running WXP, 256 mb ram, a wireless LAN, and the latest spywares, antivirus, etc.

Recently, the keyboard Trackpoint (eraser style) started going crazy. When you touch it, it may suddenly go out of sight to the bottom or top, or slowly drift out of sight, or is completely irradic with no control or the ability to select anything. So, I plugged in an extra USB optical mouse and it seemed to work OK for a few days, then it started doing the same things. The crazy thing is that these conditions come and go, primarily with the USB mouse, maybe lasting a few minutes, maybe for hours, but it usually clears up on it's own. Sometimes just unplugging/replugging the mouse solves it for some anount of time.

I have tried rebooting, disabling the trackpoint, and updating the driver, but none have helped. When I reboot, it reinstates the trackpoint each time.

I hate to give up on this laptop because it is just perfect for our use. Desktop's are just not too pratical in the den recliner. Any ideas out there to help resolve this issue?
 
It seems like theres something wrong with the mouse settings in windows. Go to the mouse settings under control panel, and check for anything out of the normal.

If you cant fix the problem, i would try re-installing windows instead of getting rid of it.
 
The Fix

The old IBM is still ailing, now refusing to boot and displaying error 8611. This led me to search the net for the error code and I believe I've found the fix.

The error 8611 is related to the Trackpoint "missing" and is often just a loose connection between the Trackpoint and the sub-board. As you can guess, this requires disassembly of the machine to get to and repair. However, I also found how to disable the Trackpoint in the BIOS.

  1. Turn on the IBM 600e and get the "Error 8611" (Pressing/holding F1 during boot up may get you to CONFIG screen)
  2. At the pop-up screen, choose TEST and allow the test to run (Neither Trackpoint or mouse will work here, use TAB to move around)
  3. Press F1 to get to the CONFIG screen
  4. Choose CONFIG
  5. Press CTRL-D
  6. Use the PAGE DN key to go to "base 128 CMOS" (several pages down)
  7. At offset 20h (1st column, 3rd row) change value to 01 (was 02)
  8. Press F2 to save, then F3 to exit.
  9. Exit and reboot (May have to power down to get out)

USB mouse only should work, and the Trackpoint will no longer appear in the CTRL Panel/Mouse/Hardware tab. :) This worked OK, but it was awkward moving around in the test and bios since niether the Trackpoint or the mouse were working.
 
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