i'm using mandrake linux 9.0 with a dell serial wheel mouse.

when i logged in as "root", i would log out again and my mouse would be frozen. i'd just reboot from the login menu and everything would be fine until the next time. i'm not sure if the root user thing has anything to do with it, though.

but recently i rebooted without going through the login window, and now my mouse doesn't work at all. i'm sure if i reinstalled, it would work again, but i've done that twice already and it keeps happening.

i'm not sure what's wrong. it would be a shame if i partitioned linux such a chunk of my harddrive and i can't even use it.

if you need more information... say so.

Do you have gpm installed? If so, this may be what's causing your problems. I don't know about you, but I have never had the need to use my mouse in console mode, so I've never installed GPM, and if it was installed by default, I would remove it. Try that and see if it works.