I just upgraded my desktop over the weekend. I know I shouldn't have changed so many variables at once, but I upgraded to Vista SP1, upgraded the chipset drivers, and various other things.

My mouse has suddenly started double-clicking on things. It's connected through a KVM (an iogear 4-port USB/DVI), but the problem doesn't affect the other computer (Windows 2003 x64) also plugged into the KVM.

Before I start messing about with the cables, does it sound sensible that installing the new Intel chipset drivers might have hosed it?

Frankly, I'm considering dusting off and nuking the site from orbit (with Vista SP1 x64), but I thought I'd ask...

Except that we're talking about MS and Vista.

"It's the only safe thing to do." - Ripley in Aliens

Edit: Actually

"I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."

I'm a Windows developer. I have to have Windows installed on my PC. Let's not go there.

It was fine before I messed with it at the weekend. I'm just wondering if anyone's seen the same problem with the Intel chipset drivers, or with SP1, so I can isolate the problem.

I disagree with Glenn. Rule out hardware problems, especially issues with the KVM switch and its cabling, before touching the OS.

Replace and/or swap out and/or try:

-keyboard
-mouse
-every KVM cable including video and mouse and keyboard
-ports on KVM switch
-KVM switch itself
-direct plugin without KVM switch
-unplug all other peripherals including all USB devices
-pull cards out of the computer (if any) until you're down to just the video and the keyboard/mouse

Do all of the above before trying to reformat the computer.

Reason: Your description sounds like problems I've had in the past which were always hardware and cabling related. Driver problems are all well and good, but I've never seen a bad driver cause ghost mouse clicks.

Tony, I said "Except"

Bah. Looks like it is a hardware problem; I've just tried using the Windows 2003 box plugged into the same KVM -- opening a web page with plenty of text and randomly single-clicking on words on it causes about 1 in 10 clicks to be misinterpreted and to select the word (i.e. seen as a double-click).

I'm loath to replace the KVM -- it was quite expensive, and quite hard to get hold of (I had to get Hugo to bring it back from the US for me). I'll see if I can try a replacement mouse in the next day or so...

Anything particular about the KVM that you need?

I can get some models over here (Canada) that are around $100 or so for 6 ports, and up from that.

Cheers

Is it just the one port that's doing that, then?

I've got some Avocent KVM's lying around, actually. Not DVI/USB, though. If you want VGA/PS2, I'd be happy to throw one your way.

No; the Windows 2003 box is plugged into a different port on the KVM, and appears to suffer from the same problem. Since the mouse is USB, I'll connect it directly to the PC, and see if it still does it. If so, then it's probably the mouse.

If that doesn't work, I've got some spare KVM cables, and it's got another two ports on it.

USB and DVI. It also does audio and USB peripheral (i.e. printer) switching separately from the KVM-switching, but I don't use that feature.

Thanks for offering to help me out; I'll rule out everything I can from here first, though.

Not to go "there" specifically, I am curious about something else. Why aren't you using VMs for everything? From your other post, you already do for Linux. To me, VMs offer so many advantages over running the OS on the box directly, including quick recovery and testing situations with snapshots. Another big advantage I can see is portability. Toss a VM on an external hard drive on the desktop, and you now can easily port it over to the laptop if you ever travel. About the only reason I haven't brought up VMs at work as a solution for everyone is the 3D issues with not having direct access to the GPU, but beyond that, they worked well for the enterprise customers I used to work with both on their servers, and on their workstations.

My Windows Vista desktop is also used for gaming, so I kinda have to run Windows on it directly, rather than in a VM. My server used to run Linux, but account federation when dealing with Windows clients was too painful (in fact, it wasn't much less painful with Linux clients), and I had a copy of Windows Server 2003 lying around...

If my server had either Intel-VT or AMD-V (and more memory), I'd probably virtualise more stuff. At the moment, I have two Linux boxes running in VMWare on Windows, but if I could get the federation working (oh, and shared printers), I'd be happy to run Windows Server in VMWare on Linux.

The wife's laptop is Windows XP, partly because I've got about 4 copies not in use, but mainly because of the account federation thing. I'd be happy to try her on Ubuntu otherwise -- she only really uses it for email and browsing.

My primary laptop is Windows Vista, with Visual Studio 2008 installed directly on it -- mainly because it needs quite a lot of memory, and VM disk performance could be better. I do use VMs for some pre-release software (and I'll do this more in future; I just had to rebuild the laptop this weekend, after a SQL Server 2008 RC0 install hosed it).

My web server is a Linux VPS (Debian), hosted somewhere in the US. One of the VMs running at home is responsible for backing this up (using rdiff-backup).

So, I do use virtualisation, but it's Linux-on-Windows, rather than Windows-on-Linux.

Oh, and note that these are all personal licenses (MSDN Professional) for Windows, rather than work licenses, so I can't just go installing a bunch of volume-licensed Windows instances in VMs, which kind of limits my options.

At work, my developer workstation runs Windows 2003 with Visual Studio 2005 and 2008. It runs about half-a-dozen VMs on Microsoft Virtual Server. There's usually a domain controller, a Systems Management Server (or ConfigMgr) box, a SQL Server box, and a variety of Windows clients, all for testing. I'll be installing Windows 2008 on it as soon as I can, so that I can use Hyper-V to speed up the VMs. All of our mission-critical servers (both in IT generally, and development specifically) are virtualised, across two (might be three) large Dell servers. We do this partly for backup/disaster recovery, but also to reduce cost, space needed in the server room, and (in large part) power consumption and A/C requirements.