Mouse coma

[Duane Morin]

Ok, this is a new one on me.  At the new job, have a brand new Dell 
machine on which I've installed Redhat 9.  Comes with a Microsoft mouse 
that has this interesting red light at the bottom.

What's happening is that sometimes when I walk away from the machine, I 
lose the mouse.  The light goes out and I get no response at all.  However 
I still have full keyboard control.  

This does not appear to be related to the screensaver or something like 
that, because sometimes I come back (complete with screen locked and 
having to type my password) just fine and the mouse still works.

Anybody experienced this?  It's a USB mouse, for what that's worth.

Duane