installing modem causes mouse not detected

Heres a stumper for ya...
(win95b- standard serial mouse-supra express ISA modem)
we got this computer in a few days ago. It came in because of a display problem. When I turned it on, windows did not detect a mouse. So I did standard troubleshooting and still couldn't get it to work. I renamed the registry and reinstalled windows- still no mouse. To determine wheather it was hardware or software, I plugged a different hard drive in and the mouse still didn't work. So I put in a serial port card. finally got the mouse to work in dos, but not windows. I was thrown. I renamed system.ini, and the registry again reinstalled windows again and it finally worked in windows. Going thru the device manager, I noticed the modem wasn't installed. So I D/L a driver and installed it, and after restart...yep you guessed it the mouse didn't work. I checked IRQ status, COM port settings etc... all looked good. Ripped the card out, restarted and the mouse still didn't work.(you would think if all traces were removed it would work right?) The only way I can get it to work is if I rename the system.ini file and restore from a clean boot. I have tried another ISA modem and that one did the same thing. Tomorrow I am going to try a PCI just for the heck of it...see what happens. ANy suggestions would be appreciated!!

You know I hit a problem simular to that one myself using Win98 as my OS. Drove me crazy trying to find out the problem. You won't believe what the final cure was. Changing the mouse. I was using a serial mouse with a PS/2 convertor on it, I went through all the problems you were having until I finally just changed to a true PS/2 mouse and it worked like a charm. May not work for you but worth a try.

I have tried a different mouse, unfortunately thats not the problem. A good thing to keep in mind with them converters is alot of them are propriotary...they only work with the mouse it came with....

I'm still workin on this one...ready to rip my hair out

I shoulden't even be asking this question except that I forgot this one time. If the modem is using com 2, have you disabled com 2 on the motherboard and made sure that the mouse is plugged into com1? Sounds silly I know, but I think we all can say that we have missed that one at least once in our lives.

Every now and then I've run across a mouse problem like your talking about. You go through all the "standard fixes" but nothing seems to do the trick. Now when I run into that problem I change out the physical com port. If your shop is anything like mine, you probably have 40962 serial ports lying around. Assuming that your using an AT board, thats an easy thing to do and believe it or not, it often solves the problem. Hope this helps ya out. Later