Tuesday, October 26, 2010

The Best Little KVM Cheap

I've used a number of inexpensive KVM switches in the past, starting way back with the mechanical ones. Until now, I've always found them to be quirky. Often they don't handle higher video resolutions well, or the mouse and keyboard don't reconnect properly on the first try.

Recently we've been buying D-Link KVM-221 2-port USB KVM switches for about $50. I can say this is the first time I've never had any hiccups at all in implementation. It even includes the cables.

Unable to Use a USB Mouse in XP

I ran into one of the strangest things a while back. An XP computer that could not use a USB mouse. You could plug the mouse in, the drivers would load, but it would not be usable.

Yesterday, I needed to replace the hard drive in that computer. After imaging the new drive I cleaned up some old junk software. One of the things I cleaned up was Flip software leftover from a Belkin KVM. It was running automatically at Startup.

After the Flip software was taken out of Startup, the mouse worked fine.

Oddly, the USB keyboard worked fine whether the software was installed or not.