Serial Mouse Windows 2000/XP
It doesn't look like serial mice are supported by default in W2K, and presumably WinXP - at least officially.
It's taken quite a bit of web searching, but it seems like a mixed bag. If you can find a driver for your serial mouse, you can install it; however, few, if any drivers are provided by Microsoft. And even then, problems seem to be frequent.
Checking those archaic IRQ and I/O port settings that I though Windows 2000 was supposed to make obsolete might be a worthy exercise... for me though, just get a USB or PS/2 mouse if at all possible and save the grief.
See this relevant usenet post about IRQs and com ports.
Hover Mouse (Formerly XMouse in TweakUI in XP)
Doh. Years ago I tried to figure out how to activate a window by hovering, AKA, XMouse in TweakUI in XP.
"To turn this setting on, just type “mouse works” into the search box in the Control Panel, and you should see an item called “Change how your mouse works”. In this screen, scroll down and find the checkbox for “Activate a window by hovering over it with the mouse”."
The above was unclear on my computer. It's Control Panel. Ease of Access Center. Make the Mouse Easier to Use.
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/switch-windows-by-hovering-the-mouse-over-a-window-in-windows-vista/
Hover Mouse in Vista / Win7 / Win10 without Raising Window
Do the above. Then do some manual registry changes to disable the auto-raise of Window.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
Edit UserPreferenceMask value to be 9F 3E 07 80 12 00 00 00 [You should only have to modify the first pair]
NOTE: Default value is 98 12 07 80 12 00 00 00.
http://winaero.com/blog/turn-on-xmouse-active-window-tracking-focus-follows-mouse-pointer-feature-in-windows-8-1-windows-8-and-windows-7/
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/9000-mouse-hover-makes-window-active-enable.html
Time delay:
In HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop.
Win Older: Find ActiveWndTrackTimeout
Win8 and higher: Find ActiveWndTrkTimeout (upgraded machines might need manual rename of key)
In DECIMAL, set that to ms before the hover window is active. i.e. 1000 for a second. I have found modern applications to be more quirky with hover mouse, I'm hoping a small delay makes it better.
Mouse Button (and more) Utility
I stumbled on this utility which helped me debug a hardware problem with an old scroll wheel mouse, and later, I used it to disable the "up" portion of the wheel, and configure the side buttons on said Dell 5 button mouse on Windows 10 (the mouse is ancient, from XP days). Free as in beer.
https://highrez.co.uk/downloads/xmousebuttoncontrol.htm
Random Mouse Hardware Notes
tags: x-mouse, mouse, hover, windows, xmouse,