I've been having a problem lately with my pointer not responding as quickly as it did before. I have windows 98. I just loaded a program for my new digital camera, but I think it was doing this before I loaded it. I also uploaded some pictures from the camera, but I don't have any more programs running than I did before. I looked at the system resources, which are 64% free when I'm running AOL (7.0), and 73% free when I'm not.

My wheels inside the mouse are clean. Sometimes I can't get it to select a button to close a window or select a choice. It won't go to a place I want it to smoothly, and I have to be much more exact in my placement of the pointer.

Sometimes the windows won't open or close right away. It seems to me like a memory problem, but I'm not sure where to start with it.

I have run both my spybot programs and have no viruses noted.
Any suggestions?
SSB

How much memory (RAM) do you have? From the percentages you've said, that means you're only using about 30% of your memory, about the same as my computer at work that I'm using right now - and I'm one of those 'multitaskers' and not experiencing any slowness.

What kind of mouse are you using and how old is it?

It does sound like a memory problem - I've had the same thing happen. However, I've also had it where the cause was a bad mouse. (In fact, I had a mouse just recently die on me - the day after we reformatted my harddrive! Ugh!) If you're not using an optical mouse (the ones that have the red light under them), it could be that even though you've tried cleaning everything out, it's just tired and not wanting to work so much anymore. Sometimes using a mousepad that doesn't have a lot of lint (the harder ones) helps prolong a mouse's life, but they won't live forever.

Do you have another mouse you can plug in and try?

If it ends up being the mouse, I'd suggest buying an optical mouse for your next one. I ended up getting one for $13 at a computer show and used it for my laptop. When my desktop's mouse died a few months ago, I started using the new optical mouse and I'm love it. The thing works well and even works if I lay it on my leg! I'm not sure how well they hold up in the long-term, but I have a feeling because there are fewer moving parts (as in, there's no mouseball to get dirty) it should hold out longer than a conventional mouse.

Tired mouse could be the problem. It is as old as the compter (2000). I don't know how long a mouse should last, but other parts of this computer have worn out and been replaced.

I have an ergonomic logitech with the scroll on top and the thumb action for enter, which I like a lot. I can bring another one from work to try it out and see what happens.

Have 128 ram memory, and I think the percentage means that I should be using about 26-30% as you said. If that is sufficient to work with, then maybe I'll check out the mouse as you suggested.
Thanks,
SSB

I replied to the wrong place by accident. . .wasn't paying attention. So I'll just add here that I'm using a hard surface mouse pad, and haven't had much problem with lint collecting inside the mouse at all.
SSB

Probably best to check out the mouse itself before looking further. The small rollers rotated by the mouse ball can gather a hard(ish) ring of dust. This needs removing once in a while. Apart from that, the mouse may need cleaning inside.

Each roller (rotated by the mouse ball) has a small disc attached to it. The disc has lots of holes in the surface. Infrared light is shone on one side of the disc and is picked up by a sensor placed at the other side. So, the light is either blocked or let through to the sensor as the disc rotates.

The two mechanisms let the computer know that the mouse is moving and which direction it is going in. It's quite a precise operation. Hair or dust can get inside the mouse and interfere with it. It's fairly easy to take the mouse apart and remove anything that might be obstructing the discs smooth movement or possibly affecting the light emitter/receiver.

An optical mouse is just so much better in my opinion. Because they don't have any moving parts, they don't suffer from any of the above. A worthwhile and inexpensive upgrade.

I have already made sure the rollers inside the mouse are clean. I also attached a different mouse to see if that made any difference, and it did not. The pointer isn't inoperative, it's just sluggish, and hard to position over a small spot to click on something. It works just fine, as it did originally, when I'm first booting up. Then after everything is finished loading, I lose the flexibility I had.

Besides the camera program, I have added an external USB hub, but I can't see how that would take any extra memory. I only use it when I want to download pics from the camera.

I can actually take the mouse apart other than just a cleaning through the mouse-ball opening?

Edited to add:***I left the pics on my harddrive that I downloaded from the camera, and they are all BIGGG. Like bigger than 326 to 978KB. Would they take away from my available memory even if they are not open or in use?***

I am updating my virus protection now, and my memory shows 54%. Any other ideas?
SSB

Well, I guess whatever it was got resolved. I didn't think I would have to run another defrag so soon, but did anyway, and that took care of the problem.
SSB

Instead of fiddling about with all of the memory and complicated items such as; would it have been a good idea to first check the battery?