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I do have three mice. I left out the third from my recent post because after I initially discovered that all three mice froze, I did all comparison testing with only the two that I mentioned last time, the M310 and the MX Revolution. I figured that testing with two mice with different receivers was enough to determine whether any results I got were unique to one single mouse.

The third mouse is a Logitech M510. Although each mouse uses a different receiver, all three utilize the same SetPoint software, which I installed shortly after I first purchased the computer. (Logitech also provides “Options” software for the M510, but not for the M310. I successfully installed it as well, but when I tried to set it up, I got a message that no device for which the software was designed was attached to the computer.)

I did uninstall and reinstall the SetPoint software, to see if it made any difference. It didn’t.

I also tried the connection utility you suggested. But each time (I tried several times), it produced a message that it was unable to pair the device with the receiver.

(A question, because I’m not understanding something. The utility says its purpose is to re-establish the connection between the receiver and the device, and I assume that the message about failing to “pair” means that there was a failure to “connect.” But since the mouse doesn’t work unless the receiver has been plugged in, isn’t there in fact a connection after it’s plugged in? I’m not trying to parse words; I’m just trying to understand what’s going on.)

Your comment that the USBDeview data indicated that I didn’t have any Logitech software installed reminded me of something that I hadn’t thought about since I originally installed it. I discovered only today that it affects only two of the mice (it doesn’t affect the M510), so I suspect it’s not relevant to the freezing problem, which affects all three mice, but I mention it for what it’s worth. I also attach a screen shot of some USBDeview data for the M510, and wonder whether they too fail to show any Logitech software installed. I can’t tell myself.

But the thing I had forgotten… After I first installed the SetPoint software, I went into the Logitech settings in order to change the M310 mouse from right handed to left handed, but couldn’t find where to do it. I didn’t think much about it at the time, because I knew I could simply go into the Windows 10 mouse settings and make the change there, which is what I did. Once I did that I forgot about the Logitech settings.

But now, in light of your comment, I dug further. It turns out that quite a number of Logitech customers have reported an issue with this (Logitech support posted a message on it for Windows XP, Vista and 7, though not for 10; and one blog has over 60 comments on the subject). Specifically, the Settings box is supposed to have three tabs, “My Mouse,” “My Keyboard,” and “Tools.” But when my M310 or MX Revolution is attached to this particular computer, the Settings box has only the “Tools” tab. A screen shot is attached. Also attached is a screen shot for the M510 Settings box, which does have all three tabs, which I wasn’t aware of before, because I hadn’t been using the M510 with this computer, and had connected it only briefly, just to confirm that it too froze when an external drive was attached.

Since the freezing problem persists with all three mice, I’m not going to narrate the things I tried today in an effort to fix the tabs problem. If you think it’s relevant, because the tabs problem and the freezing problem might be aspects of some over-arching issue, I can post back on that subject. For now, suffice it to say that nothing I’ve tried has helped with the tabs issue.

Does any of this (or anything else) suggest any further steps I might take in an effort to fix the freezing issue?

Thanks.

I’m not sure what a unified transceiver is. Looking through the Logitech site, it seems to come up in connection with USB receivers that can be used with multiple devices (e.g., a mouse and keyboard). If that’s what it refers to, I’m not using one; or, at least, if it is one, it’s not how it was packaged as sold.

I’m experiencing the freezing problem with two different mice, each of which was purchased separately from any other device. I started with the one I purchased specifically for the laptop: a Logitech M310 (specs shown here < https://www.logitech.com/en-us/product/wireless-mouse-m310 >, where they refer to the receiver as a nano-receiver with 2.4 GHZ wireless connectivity).

Because of the continued freezing problem, I’ve also tried using a much older mouse that I have for my slowly dying Win 7 desktop. That mouse might be (probably is) more than 10 years old, a Logitech MX Revolution, which utilizes a receiver which is about an inch long. It’s depicted here: < https://support.logitech.com/en_us/article/9338?product=a0qi00000069usMAAQ >.

Both mice utilize the same SetPoint software, and both experience the freezing problem I’ve described.

I downloaded USBDeview and ran it as administrator. It doesn’t identify either mouse as a Logitech, but I determined which lines of information concerned the mouse by disconnecting and then reconnecting it. In both cases, disconnecting the receiver removed the green highlighting for three separate lines of data related to a USB receiver, and the entry in the “Connected” column entry changed from “Yes” to “No.” Reconnecting the receiver changed it all back.

So when I then connected an external drive that caused the mouse to freeze, I checked all three lines. I did that for two different external drives. Nothing changed in any of the lines of data. In all three cases, the entry in the column for “Disabled” said “No”, regardless of whether an external drive was connected with corresponding freezing of the mouse.

Right clicking on a line and selecting properties produces a box that presents the same data in more compact form. Given the fact that connecting a drive that made the mouse freeze didn’t change any of the entries, I doubt it helps, but for what it’s worth, I took a screen capture of that information for one of the three lines of data for each mouse. Copies of those two screen captures are attached.

Hoping that this sheds some light.

Thanks for your help.

I’m new to the forums, and when I first read the user account and general rules, I either missed the thing about cross-pointing or simply forgot it. My apologies.

My intent was, when/if I got advice from one forum that didn’t appear in the second forum, I’d mention it myself on the second forum. But now that the rule’s been brought to my attention, I’ll of course comply with it.

2 users thanked author for this post.

Elly, b

There was a single response. It was, in full “Already answered at AskWoody.”

I replied that the solution here was only partial (since I’d still have to disconnect and reconnect the mouse every time I rebooted or changed external drives), and that, in any case, it had turned out that the suggested solution worked with only one particular drive, which had started not to freeze the mouse at all, even if I didn’t go though the dance of disconnecting and reconnecting the mouse. (BTW, since then, that drive has gone back to causing the freeze, with the disconnect/reconnect solution not working for it at all).

There have been no other responses at the other forum. I assume that the single reply I did get, by implying that I already had a complete solution, is driving other potential responses away.

It turns out that things are more complicated. The device manager reports that all of my drivers are up to date. But beyond that, it turns out that the solution of disconnecting and reconnecting the mouse worked only for the external drive that I tried this morning. I’ve now tried it with two other external drives (both very new), and they both freeze the mouse, which stays frozen even after I disconnect and reconnect it.

Further, the drive for which the process seemed to work this morning now doesn’t freeze the mouse at all, even if I disconnect the drive, leave the mouse connected, and then reconnect the drive. Which is rather curious, to say the least. That drive is a rather older one, but still a USB 3. Other older drives have also frozen the mouse, but I have not yet tested what effect disconnecting and reconnecting the mouse has on them.

But in short, the problem hasn’t been even partially solved after all, except in the case of that one drive. So if any other solutions suggest themselves, I’d appreciate hearing about them.

Thanks.

I appreciate the advice, and have in fact been pursuing that issue separately. Last week someone told me that MS Surface machines were “notorious” for having under-powered USB connections. It was news to me that power was an issue at all with USB connections, but my knowledge of computers is limited to following directions and using software, so I looked into it a bit. Another person agreed, and suggested that a powered USB hub might do the trick. I think it’s nuts that they’d make a laptop that can’t simply be used with an external drive without attaching another source of power, but what do I know? So I duly ordered one from Amazon and hope to have it delivered by the end of this week. If that doesn’t help with the freezing problem (which happens for every one of the six USB drives I’ve tried, with the exception of my old 2 GB pen drive), then I’ll be back here posting about it in a new thread.

Thanks.

Just now, the only thing I had open was a jpg in IrfanView. I got up, got a coffee, came back and I hit my shortcut keys to start up my email program (The Bat). It opened up in the back.

So at least in this case, it’s not as though a bunch of things were going on on the computer. And I doubt I made some error, since all I did was hit two keys.

I’m using Open Shell for the interface.

Actually, I now realize that when I said earlier that I don’t have any programs on my new laptop that aren’t on my old Win 7 desktop, that’s not true because of Open Shell. I used Classic Shell on the desktop computer, but it’s not being updated for Win 10 (the developer has said Win 10 is too hard to keep up with), so I didn’t use it on the new laptop. Open Shell is, as I understand it, a “successor” of sorts to Classic Shell, but because of limitations imposed by the way MS changed everything around after Win 7, I can’t get the old Win XP interface back, as I could before (I really hate the eye candy approach dominates Windows more and more), so all I could do was strip down all the excess baggage as much as I could.

So there’s that.

 

I don’t think it ever happened to me in earlier versions (I go back to Win 95, skipping Me, Vista and 8), but if it did, it was much less frequent than I’m experiencing with Win 10 (although, as I said, it’s much less than 50% of the time). I have a lot fewer programs installed on my Win 10 laptop than on my Win 7 desktop, and nothing on the Win 10 machine that’s not on the Win 7 unit, though I recognize that that’s not decisive.

But in any case, if this is just a long-standing deal with Windows, I’ll obviously have to live with it if I have to.

1803. Time to move up to 1809?

Thanks.

Thanks for the replies. Much appreciated.

And there’s always someone else’s system …

Thanks for the suggestion. I’ll see if the problem drive can be accessed on a friend’s computer. If it can, I’ll wipe it then. In the meanwhile, I’ve downloaded the programs you suggested, and will try them out later today. But unless I can actually identify a specific cause of the problem (so I’ll know how to either avoid or correct it in the future), I’m strongly inclined to junk both drives, since my back ups have to be dependable.

Thanks again.

First, if you bought them two months ago, …

I thought of the warranty, but what with the fact that the data recovery place’s computer could access the one drive I brought there, and the fact that I may have caused the problem by using Comparator, I decided that the process of making a claim would be too aggravating.

The problem drive (now only one of the two drives, since the one miraculously became accessible again after I paid to have the data copied from it) isn’t displayed at all in Disk Management. See attachment ‘A’, which shows my drives. At the time I took the screen image, I had two drives attached: the problem drive and an 8 GB drive. The latter is shown as Drive ‘K’, but the former isn’t shown at all. (Due to the size of the window, the screen capture doesn’t show two more drives, both DVD drives.) Attachment ‘B’, on the other hand, shows the Device Manager, which displays both the 8 GB drive (“PNY USB 2.0 FD USB Device”) and the problem drive (“WD Ext HDD 1021 USB Device”). And attachment ‘C’ shows the properties of the problem drive: reported as “working properly” even though it has no drive letter assigned to it and I can’t access it. (Note: I did try the troubleshooter, and it got me nowhere.) Truly baffling to me.

Have you tried Infinicore’s suggestion to delete all the USB controllers from Device Manager, Reboot and let them be rediscovered by Windows? I’d give that a try before I did anything else. :cheers:

Oops. In the excitement (or whatever) of seeing that one of the drives was suddenly accessible again, I forgot to mention that I had deleted the controllers without its solving the problem. Sorry for the oversight.

I don’t have an explanation, but a suspicion, that the initial cause of the problem with the two drives stemmed from my use of a Briefcase type program (ComparatorPro). Before the problem developed I had experienced a system freeze while using Comparator with each drive. (I had also experienced freezes while using the program with other, 1 TB drives — freezing apparently can happen if the program is used with too many files — but my drive-recognition problem occurred only for the two 2 TB drives.) I didn’t mention this earlier because I figured that the ultimate problem had to be with the drives themselves, since I couldn’t see them only any of three computers, but could see one of them on a fourth computer (the repair shop’s computer).

The drives did not show up in disk management, even though they showed up in the device manager (without drive letter assigned). Oddly, however, I looked again just now, just to be sure, and discovered — lo and behold — that the drive that I had taken to the data recovery people now appears and has a drive letter assigned to it when I connect it to either my desktop or my laptop. That is, it seems normal in all respects. The drive that I didn’t take to the data recovery shop is still inaccessible.

I’m positive that the data recovery shop didn’t do anything to “fix” the drive that now works again. At least the shop didn’t do anything to it intentionally. I was there when they connected it to their Win7 machine, and the computer immediately recognized the drive in the customary manner (remember that, as mentioned in my initial post, my wife’s Win7 machine had not recognized the same drive). After that, all they did was copy the files from the problem drive to another one that I had given them. Yet here I am with the drive working again.

This is now such a bizarre problem that I’m not expecting a solution. Though if an explanation is apparent, I’d certainly like to hear it. Otherwise, I’m guessing that my best course is to simply disposed of the drives. I can simply wipe the one that now works again (I’ll still get rid of it since I don’t want to rely on it) and then dispose of it, but the problem remains that if my computer can’t see the the second drive, I don’t know of a way to wipe it. Any inexpensive suggestion on that score? Other than a cheap hand grenade?

Thanks.