sometimes my mouse works just fine.
but
sometimes i open firefox, browse happily untill i see its crazy
I try to roll down a page and i got this functionallity:

wheeldown -> nextpage
wheelup -> previous page

while:

mouse4-> scrolls up
and
mouse5-> scrolls down
wtf?!

switched functions there

mouse4 should be wheelup
mouse5 should be wheeldown
and vice-versa

what do i do?

ow yeah, and

is there any way to make sound in linux work like in windoze xp?
like while you are listening to winamp, you can hear a beep error at the same time.

with drake im listening to amarok and using amsn, so when i close amarok i get like 500 little stupid sounds from messages, statuses etc that were delayed to when the 'sound server' or whatever is free. could i make it play both music and stupid sounds at the same time?

auhauha playing with smileys

If you're using KDE then turn off aRts (the KDE sound server) then set your audio apps to use ALSA directly. Some ALSA drivers (emu10k1 for example) allow multiple sound sources.

About the mouse problem, is it just FireFox that does the funny buisness that you describe, or has the wheel/45 functionality swapped in general?

If it's just firefox then it's probably a problem with firefox and not whatever else. For some mice you can try unplugging it and re-attaching it, but note that with ps/2 you can loose the mouse until the next reboot if you do that.

I had similar problems when using a mouse with an emulating KVM switch - the mouse functionality would become garbled after each switch until I unplugged-replugged it.

Else you can look at your xf86config file (or xorgconfig as it may be now) and see what mouse options are listed there.

Hope this helps!