After I replaced the original 1-TB Western Digital hard drive with a 2-TB Samsung SSD, this old laptop with Pentium inside became satisfyingly responsive. Increasing the RAM from the original 4 GB to 8 GB had not had any perceptible effect. All those occasional, weekly or monthly wholesale freezes and extreme slowdowns (despite having full Norton antivirus and Norton Ultimate Utilities) for the past many years have so far been absent. However, the mouse/pointer freezes that weren't an issue are now occurring apparently randomly every 5 to 20 minutes.
A temporary solution for this, releasing the pointer freeze, that I found by trying different keys on the keyboard, now appears to be hitting the shift button repeatedly (over 5 times, a shortcut to turn on Sticky Keys, letting you use the Shift, CTRL, ALT, or Windows Logo keys by pressing one key at a time.). After the Sticky Keys window appears, you could select "No" by using the tab button to move from Yes to No, or select Yes. This solution works immediately most of the time, perhaps 90% of the time. Other times you may have to repeat the pressing of the shift button several more times or just wait for 5 to 10 minutes for the pointer freeze to be released.
Do you have a more permanent solution to prevent the pointer freeze or do you know the cause of this freeze?
