Oh man I am really getting pissed now. Actually I'm running Win 98SE, and have all the latest drivers, Direct X, system updates, etc. but the mouse is still erratic. I reformatted *again* (that's number 5 folks) without installing wingate, but I have the same problem. I guess it was just a coincidence that Wingate seemed to mess it up every time. Or maybe it's something to do with the NICs. I'm gonna try getting a PS/2 header for my motherboard instead of using the serial adapter. One weird thing is that no matter what, my OEM MS IntelliMouse won't work and my retail MS Wheel mouse does when using the adapter so I'm hoping a PS/2 header will resolve the problem for both. Thanks to everyone for their help.