Why it is going to take Microsoft more than a month to deliver Windows Vista Service Pack 1 over its digital distribution network, Windows Update, from release-to-manufacturing date is beyond the capacity of my understanding. Although notably the Mardi Gras is in March, maybe that has something to do with it.

Update: Some have pointed out that the delay is in fact due to some driver problems on existing Windows Vista computers that prevents a flawless upgrade. The bizarre thing is that they’re not spending a month working around the problem, assuming they can. They’re going to spend a month working out which drivers are problematic, and when March comes around, Windows Update is only going to alert and prevent those users with faulty driver installs from installing SP1. They’re delaying a benefit to potentially millions of users because some driver programmers made a boohoo.

Still begs the question why advanced users can’t download it from Microsoft.com Downloads today. What difference does it make in March?

Having installed SP1 RC Refresh 2 flawlessly, I can vouch for the improved Vista experience even if it’s a unmeasurable amount. There is no reason not to install it, and everything

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Hi, Mike Nash here from the Windows Product Management group at Microsoft.  Today we are excited to announce that we have released Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista to manufacturing (RTM) for our first set of languages (English, French, Spanish, German and Japanese).

Service Pack 1 is a very important milestone because it addresses many of the key issues that our customers have identified with Windows Vista over the last year both, directly and through programs like the Customer Experience Improvement Program.  With Service Pack 1, we have made great progress in performance, reliability and compatibility.  One of the great things about my job is that I get to play with the latest builds of our products — I’ve personally been running Windows Vista SP1 pretty exclusively for a few months and I’ve noticed that my systems run faster and more reliably than they did with the “Gold” release of Windows Vista.

When we first released Windows Vista last year, there were lots of customers who had great experiences, but some had issues finding applications that worked well on Windows Vista; others had problems finding the right device drivers for some of the hardware devices that they used.  The

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The first thing to do when your mouse stops working is to check the cable connection. There is no point reinstalling the mouse if it isn’t plugged in.

The next thing to try is to reboot the PC. I have written instructions on how to reboot a PC using the keyboard.

If after checking the cables and restarting the PC, the mouse still does not work you should try reinstalling the mouse. To do this you need to open the Device Manager, which can be accessed from the System Properties dialog box.

To open the System Properties dialog box hold down a Windows key (the ones with the Windows logo on) and press the Pause/Break key (on most keyboards this will be in a set of three keys to the right of the function keys).

Alternatively you can minimise all windows by holding down the Windows key and pressing D, then use the cursor key to highlight ‘My Computer’ and press the Application key to open up a menu, from this menu select ‘Properties’ using the cursor keys and press Enter.

The System Properties dialog will look something like this:

Click to continue reading "Mouse stopped working: how to reinstall"

Written by Stepterix on February 4th, 2008 with 2 comments.
Read more articles on Keyboard shortcut and otherSoftware and mouse.