Strange problem which I find no reference to anywhere else. Help would be greatly appreciated.

I boot linux, reach the graphical login screen, the cursor does not respond to mouse movement. I reboot, it works fine. Every second boot has the problem, so I am booting twice every time I want to use the system.

Specs:
Distro - Mandrake 10.1 Community
Computer - Pentium 2, 350mh CPU, 128mb RAM
Mouse - Magic Mouse AM-747. An old serial mouse
dual boot with Win 98 (which boots up ok)

Attempts to remedy:
Change bootloader - lilo and grub have the same problem
Reinstall Mandrake, change boot loader location - still the same
Alter boot loader settings in mandrake control centre - no difference
Login with keyboard - mouse stays frozen

I suspect a motherboard problem, but any fresh ideas or suggestions welcomed

Check your log files as they will probably tell you what is going on;
#su
#password
#cat /var/log/syslog | more

good suggestion and a simple one to try

look at your /etc/X11/Xf86config file for the mouse stuff...mine looks like this
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse1"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "ExplorerPS/2"
Option "Device" "/dev/mouse"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "6 7"
EndSection

I have a wheel mouse......check with Mdk database if there are known issues with your input device or search for persons using your mouse and the xf86config file.

You can use MCC with root passwd to change your mouse to a generic PS2 and reboot to see if that solves your problem as well

thanks guys, both posts useful. Took a bit of time to track down, hence the delay. The problem is that harddrake reconfigures the mouse (/etc/X11/XF86Config) every time I boot - alternating between a good configuration and a bad one. Any ideas how to solve, other than buying a new mouse or disabling harddrake?

you should be using su mode to overwrite that file

backup the true working one somewhere else

delete all wrong ones so they can not be found in /etc area

The configuration in /etc/X11/XF86config which works is:

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse1"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "Microsoft"
Option "Device" "/dev/mouse"
Option "Emulate3Buttons"
Option "Emulate3Timeout" "50"
EndSection

The incorrect configuration, which harddrakes writes over the correct one, reads:

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse1"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "ExplorerPS/2"
Option "Device" "/dev/mouse"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "6 7"
EndSection

I don't know how to stop harddrake from overwriting the mouse configuration each time it boots, except to disable it

I just removed /etc/X11/XF86config.old - will see what happens.