Zorin 11 will not detect any mouse

I am struggling to install Zorin 11.0 on an MSI K8T Neo2-F motherboard with the latest Bios version and Zorin will not detect ANY mouse whatsoever! Ever try to install using the keyboard TAB and Enter buttons instead of GUI to see what happens?? A PITA with no **** to cure! I have tried Optical, USB, USB with an adaptor to the round mouse port, mechanical ball mouse and even dug around in my junk box and tried an old mouse with the rectangular com port connector held on by the two screws! I also swapped the Plain Jane optical wheel mouse from the emachine with my so called fancier Microshaft optical wheel mouse. All mice have an umbilical cord or tail if you prefer because I figured trying a wireless rodent would be asking for trouble (I will try this next!!) An epidemic of rodents here sitting on my desk. The same DVD and USB flash or thumb drive was used on my T3256 emachine with an MSI K9N6PGM2-V2 with no problems and a fast installation. Is there an additional driver I have to shoehorn or force feed to my old Athlon MSI to get the mouse to talk to it's mother?? Otherwise both motherboards work fine with Windoze of all versions and the Zorin OS was easier to install on my emachine because so far no drivers or driver utilities were required during installation. As it was the onboard audio driver supplied by Realtek and MSI for Win XP 32 did not work on the emachine.

You have my sympathy, I now avoid MSI motherboards like the plague. I have the same mobo on a different machine, whilst never having had Zorin on there I did have Sabayon Linux than ran without any issues. A machine I built for family member that had Windows XP and Windows 7 had major issues with usb ports yet people on the msi forum were so up themselves that all they could say was "there is nothing wrong with USB drivers for xxxxxxx motherboard" - different to the one that you and I both share.

Just a quick update regarding this problem now that my post has been placed on this forum due to the spam check. All USB ports work just fine and this board I have had from new from 2004 with no problems whatsoever except it is fussy with RAM. Now the updated discovery that I stumbled on is I appear to have an invisible mouse Cursor! On my last attempt I used my wireless rodent along with a non USB mouse eliminating the suspected USB or possible USB driver issues and one thing I discovered was while sliding my rodent around to see if the Cursor appeared is the drop down menus at the top right corner started to blink and drop down. Also the language selection in the other monitor (running multiple monitors) would pop up the side bar beside the selection as if I was pointing or placing the Cursor on it. This is obviously the problem or should I say causing the problem of which would be there is a cursor flying around the desktop that cannot be seen. Perhaps I have a buggy copy that I downloaded VIA bit torrent. Otherwise I'm posting this reply on my other MSI Desktop K9N6PGM2 with no issues. This MOBO is about 5 years newer or about a 2009 vintage compared to my K8T Neo2 and although Linux is fantastic for drivers of older hardware, perhaps a 12-13 year old board and drivers could be a small issue? Just stabbing around in the dark (or should I say stabbing around the desktop with an invisible cursor) here other than suspecting a possible defective installation file. I have never seen anything like this before and this is my first attempt with Zorin. A bit off topic here but I have installed Mandrake/Mandriva, Linpus Lite, etc, but always ran away and hid after having to attempt to deal with that damn command line!!! It reminds me of dos. What brought me to this distro was the option to make it resemble Windoze (sorry I'm a GUI slave).

It would appear the newer kernel just doesn't have the proper drivers for this board!! I installed earlier versions of Ununtu, Linpus Linux, Mandrake, and even the Russian Linux XP Desktop 2008 and everything works just fine proving there is most certainly nothing wrong with this board! When I go to the newer versions and by the way ALL of their installer stages look very similar to each other regardless of the distro. SO other than going back to Windows of which it obviously works "right out of the box" how do I install the proper software DURING installation to make this work? This shouldn't be too much to ask for and leads me to realize why so many people I know have no desire to even concider Linux.

This leads to what I have been saying previously, sadly Linux is going down the Wintel route where you need to have the latest hardware to show it off. Try something more up-to-date with older kit in mind that does not have PAE enabled such as SolydX Community Edition Stable. Before you ditch Zorin altogether, have you tried booting then choosing F6 for other options at boot time? I would check mark each one if you can and then see if you can get your mouse working.

No I haven't (using F6) due to the lack of information and thank you for being the only one offering to help. Before I came back here I did a Google and this is a very common problem as I found out reading Ubuntu forums and there were a number of older posts on this forum of which my search here didn't reveal. After seeing a number of others in the same boat and this problem includes many other motherboards including Asus. I went back to Zorin 6.? (6.03 I think) to try to determine how far back would work and the same problem was there except at times I could see an attempted cursor moving depending on the colour of the background and unless I moved the mouse I certainly wouldn't have identified any cursor due to the very faint rectangle with stripes within. Ubuntu 5.10 works very well but upgrading results in a kerfuffle! I haven't bothered since and reinstalled Windows XP32 back on the drive. It would appear that the recommended hardware for the latest Ubuntu is a dual core processor. My thoughts on this is the latest Kernel is becoming as large of a resource hog as Windows after reading that. Vista was a gluttonous hog, seven wasn't any better and now here comes Linux not to mention moving away from older very usable hardware. As you and others probably know Linux was known for performing very well on older hardware with stable performance and a very large amount of drivers for many devices. My how things have changed with the exception of a steep learning curve that still exists. It's no wonder I know of very few that are using it for this reason. I keep trying and I often wonder why.

Another possible solution

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/itsfoss.com ... ent=safari

Soon they will call Google the Linux user's handbook. When I loose what little common sense I have left I will grab a spare drive and reinstall Zorin. First the F6 and then as mentioned here attempting the terminal without a mouse.

Strange indeed. I was wondering if it could be a video type issue and if changing the theme might help, assuming you could see enough to do that.
You have an old PS2 type mouse I'm guessing? But same with USB?
Did the treatment above work for you?
I recall having problem with something not working when I installed Zorin 11 on SSD but it was OK on a HDD, damn computers.
And those mice are so quiet you can't even hear them...

Strange indeed. I was wondering if it could be a video type issue and if changing the theme might help, assuming you could see enough to do that.
You have an old PS2 type mouse I'm guessing? But same with USB?
Did the treatment above work for you?
I recall having problem with something not working when I installed Zorin 11 on SSD but it was OK on a HDD, damn computers.
And those mice are so quiet you can't even hear them...

Your clearly not feeing them the right stuff then! (Would you look at that, one of the little blighters has eaten my 'd'!

I recently moved to the country and this morning a rabbit was out the window so I was going to suggest to use something larger like a bunny rather than a mouse...
And they come in White, Black, Grey and a few other colors also to match the theme. Hennmann's mice might be an 'ex' lab rat so may have substance issues...