optical mouse works only in safe mode

[stumble]

Since I  put a new hard drive in my computer my optical mouse does not load when rebooting most of the time, works for a short while once in a while and then bogs down to dysfunctional, but it works fine if I reboot in safe mode.  

I have changed USB ports but that didn't help.  

Do you think I need a new mouse?   Why would a broken mouse work fine in safe mode.   It's an old IBM  machine with XP Pro on it.

Sandy :-?

[GX1_Man]

Try another mouse on that computer and try your mouse on another machine. You'll know soon enough where the problem is.

Be sure and shut down before removing/installing things for best results.

[stumble]

Well, now the mouse won't even work in safe mode.  I took a PS2 mouse and plugged that in the PS2 slot while I had the other mouse in the USB port.  Neither mouse would work, although the PS2 mouse lights up, whereas the other one does not.   This same non working mouse works on a different computer.  

I guess it's not the new hard drive.  Aside from the mouse it seems to work fine.  Although, when I ran Maxtor  PM diagnostic it froze every time when it came to choosing a drive.

The USB port seems to be working because when I plug in an external hard drive it is recognized.  I just can't slide anything onto it with no mouse.

When the mouse was working somewhat  I looked in Control Panel and it said the mouse was working fine.

[Dam1an]

Sounds like a driver issue to me.  Try removing the driver and installing a new one downloaded from the net.  When you go into safe mode, windows uses the absolute basic mouse drivers packaged with windows.  That's probably why it was working in safe mode for a bit.