erratic mouse and keyboard behavior

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware (More info?)

Hi
I seem to be having a strange problem with my USB microsoft optical wheel
mouse and P/S 2 keyboard. I can no longer correctly multiple select with the
control key. When I press it in explorer I can select one item and the other
items I select are not displayed until the control or shift key is released.
If I hold down this key and move the mouse I can see a noticible change in
movement. The keyboard does not multiple backspace when holding the key
down. In Internet Explorer the cursor completely freezes if I hold down the
control or shift keys. The keyboard functions seem to work OK (not as good
as it should be) in the control panel applet, but not in real life.
All this behavior seems to follow some odd behavior by Office 2003. When
opening a PDF file, the Office installer insisted on having my program CD
inserted and then copied some files. After that I could again open PDF files
as expected. Upon Reboot I got a mouse error about point32.exe. The mouse
works fine except where I noted.
I have done the following:
Uninstalled mouse drivers, reinstalled mouse driver version 5.2, no change.
Uninstall nvidia display drivers, reinstall video drivers ver. 66.93, no
change.
Changed size of both keyboard and mouse buffers in registery, no change.
Booted to safe mode, no change.
Have not uninstalled Office or Adobe as yet, I'm hoping for a fix.

If anyone has a clue I am forever grateful.

Thanks,
Bill