Bonecrusher -

Carefully now.

FIRST ISSUE

I can right-click on a sentence to highlight it ?????

You normally left-click to highlight, and then right-click on the highlighted area to drop down the menu where you can left-click the Copy command.

If you actually do right-click to select, or if you can select using the right button, your mouse buttons have gotten "flipped" and you should be able to left-click on what you highlighted to drop down the menu, then right-click to select Copy. This is a standard "optional setting" to accomodate lefties.

If that's the case, and you're not left-handed, go to Start|Control Panel¹ and double click on "Mouse." On the "Buttons" tab², check that you're set for a Right-handed mouse.

(The other possibility is that your mouse has just gotten turned around and you're looking at its nose instead of up its ass in the normal manner.)

¹ Vista defaults have lots of commands in irrational and bizarre locations. I've set mine to show Control Panel on the Start Menu, and your computer builder may have done that for you; but you may have to look elsewhere to get Control Panel open. Good luck, if it's not already there, as I don't recall where I finally found it the first time.

² The tabs and choices can vary with the kind of mouse you have installed, but there should always be a place to "swap buttons" if you're using any mouse with two or more buttons.

SECOND ISSUE

If your optical mouse (with headlight instead of ball) doesn't have a wire/cord/cable connecting it to the computer, it has a battery inside the mouse. A low battery sometimes will still click one-side and not the other, although usually the whole mouse performance just quits - or becomes very erratic.

If you do have a cable to the computer, there shouldn't be a separate mouse battery so don't worry about it.

THIRD ISSUE

Recent Windows versions have had some problems with USB devices, particularly with the mouse. Until a patch was distributed, quite a few WinXP users reported that if the mouse was moved while the computer was going into a standby or sleep mode, they had no mouse when the computer woke back up.

Usually a reboot will clear the USB connection. If a simple reboot doesn't work, the mouse should be disconnected, reboot, and reconnect the mouse after windows starts up. You should be able to plug in as soon as the login screen shows up, if there's a problem with needing the mouse to get the rest of the way in. (An alternate method: reboot with the mouse disconnected, plug in and reboot.)

If your mouse has a connecting wire/cable, and the connector on the computer end is about a half inch wide and 1/8 inch thick, that's a USB connector. If it's any other shape, you have an "old fashioned serial" mouse that shouldn't be affected by the known problems, although a reboot sometimes is helpful just "because it works."

I haven't seen any reports of this same mouse problem with Vista, but it's new enough that not seeing a report is not too reassuring. About half of users report the mouse scroll wheel doesn't work in the new Word in Vista, but does work in all the other programs. This was reported to Microsoft during first beta trials five years ago and they have made NO RESPONSE to it. There is no reason not to suspect that other mouse problems, for USB and other kinds, may have crossed over into Vista.

FOURTH ISSUE

A temp space cleanup is still recommended. A reboot should, but doesn't always, clear a lot of the trash. The best way to clean up is to close all programs you have running, open Windows Explorer, Right Click on your main hard drive and select Properties. Click on the General tab and there should be a button called "Disk Cleanup." Click and enjoy. It should (eventually) show you several categories of things that can be removed. Generally it's safe to remove anything listed.

John