I bought a used Dell laptop from my employer. It came with W2K which I'm not very fond of so I reformatted the HD and loaded Win98 and then a ME upgrade. I had to download some drivers from Dell'* website to get it to function normally. Basically I just needed the video adapter software. All other hardware was recognized by Windows.

My problem is that the longer it remains on, the less responsive the mouse and keyboard become. The mouse movement gets very jerky. The pointer will scroll smoothly... pause... then ends up well past my target. The keyboard is similar as the cursor will scroll... pause... continue... pause... etc. If the laptop is on for an hour or so, the mouse is basically useless.

So far, I have experimented with adjusting the graphics accelerator settings, downloading and installing the Symantics mouse program/drivers from Dell twice, updating keyboard driver, and watching the System Monitor for any abnormalities. I can't seem to figure out what the problem is. If I reboot, it'* fine for a while then goes back to driving me crazy.

Any thoughts?

What specific model is it? I'm pretty familiar with Dell'* cause I work with them. Lots of their laptops tend to overheat, which may be causing this.

Chances is the problem is win ME it is the worst windows I would recommend Win98se or W2K that was on it

It'* a Dell Latitude CPi. There is a model number PPX on the bottom too.

I have ME on my desktop and that works pretty well. I really only loaded the upgrade when My wireless card wouldn't work. After the upgrade it worked so I left it the same.

Wow, a real old one. I would first try to find the latest updates to all the drivers on Dell'* site. I've never seen those overheat.

I'm going to assume that the laptop originally came with W2K when new. If so, it'* not usually a good idea to downgrade to an older version of windows than the computer was made for. Quite often if the computer is newer than the operating system there may not be all the drivers. There may be drivers but they might be generic and not specific to your hardware. By nature windows ME is extremely unstable as-is. It'* quite often referred to as the "red headed step child" when it comes to operatiing systems. It was very bad!

I suppose that I can reformat again and just stick with 98SE. I just hope that I can get my wireless card to work.

It does have a Microsoft sticker on it that says "Designed for Windows 2000 Professional, Windows NT Workstation 4.0, Windows 98". I'm not sure if that means anything.

ME and 2kPro were released at the same time, and were both replaced at the same time by XP. They'll interchange fine.

Did you install in the correct order?

Windows, chipset, video, drivers, update windows, programs?

Not quite. Windows, video, drivers, programs, beer for me. I did nothing with the chipset or windows update. I'm uncertain as to what you mean by chipset anyway so it'* no surprise that I didn't do anything with it.

Chipset is the type of drivers the computer uses. You may not need them as they could be included in windows, but say I built a computer with an N-Force2 motherboard, I would need to install the NForce 2 chipset drivers. It gives the windows installation instructions on how ot use your exact hardware, since not all computers are the same.

I think you just may be unhappy with it'* performance, but it'* age might be the biggest reason for that.