odd mouse problems w/ no apparent cause

[Nomad]

First off, my sincere apologies if this has already been addressed :\

I'm running win2k on a 1.8 ghz Intel, with "261,596 kb ram" and a geforce ti 200, and my mouse is the intellimouse optical, and it's plugged in the USB port instead of the PS2 which I have an adapter for... I've had the mouse for quite a while now without any problems.
But just recently it's been acting kind of odd, it will behave as though the sensitivity was lowered significantly, but the intellipoint software (which I have tried reinstalling) says it's the same...
The sensitivity thing is just step one though, step two is that my mouse will freeze for a moment (typically while playing TFC), and then come back. Soon after that it will die completely, usually the light on the mouse goes out too. These three steps don't always happen in the same order, and regardless of what happens, restarting fixes it.
Help?

[Janus]

could just be a faulty mouse, do u still have the warrenty?

[Nomad]

that was my first thought, but I plugged a regular ball mouse in and it had similar problems... I can try another mouse if it sounds like a hardware issue

[Janus]

either that or mayabe the port on ur mobo is messed up, do u have any ps2 ports at all that u can try it on? if not try a different usb port. its possible ur sampling rate isnt high enough for the usb port? just a guess u can change that under the control panel for mice.

[Patch]

any microsoft mouse has a great warranty, theres a number on the bottom of the mouse somewhere. Take that if you cant fix the problem and contact microsoft about it. They will ask you to do a couple of quick tests and if they all fail then they will give you a response number which you have to inquire to replace the mouse. I have a intellimouse 2.0, contacted them, did the test and recieved a brand new mouse (3.0) in the mail a week later. did have to pay a thing. Good Luck

[Nomad]

how would I go about contacting them... is that something I can do via email or would I have to go look up some tech support number? ;x

[Nomad]

well, on reccomendation from a clanmate I disabled a program called windows management (winmgmt.exe), but while I was trying to figure out how to disable it (it wouldn't end task), my mouse died... so I was navigating via my keyboard, and I finally found out how to get to it, stopped it, and as soon as I did my mouse started working again, so I figured hey cool it's fixed.
Unfourtunately it's still dying. It seems like it's an overheating thing, because it works fine for a while the first time I turn on my computer for the day, but then it dies sooner every time I restart after that (or at least it seems to...).
Any other ideas?

[Patch]

do you have XP?

[Nomad]

patch, if you check my first post you'll see that I am using Windows 2000, not XP ;p
Una, I did buy my mouse retail, but this isn't the one I got... this one is from a friend, it wasn't working on his computer so he gave it to me, and my old one broke so I use this one now... btw, my mouse hasn't died since it got hot enough outside to keep the windows closed and run the AC, but it still does the sensitivity thing :\