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I’m sure most of you have encountered this problem: you have a serial device that continuously sends data (such as a serial GPS) and Windows XP detects is as a serial device upon start-up. My I-Bus adapter usually does that.
As a result, Windows installs a serial mouse driver, the actual device stops working as it should and the mouse cursor behaves erratically (as the device is obviously NOT sending mouse data).

From a plethora of solutions all over the Internet, I found only 3 that actually seem to work.

Solution 1 – disable serial mouse in Device Manager
Boot Windows XP as usual. Windows installs the serial mouse driver and the cursor gets crazy. After the system finishes booting, unplug the serial device. The mouse cursor should return to normal. Open Device Manager (Start / Control Panel / System / Hardware / Device manager), expand the branch labeled ‘Mice and other pointing devices’ and there you will find the false serial mouse. Do not uninstall it, as it will be detected again upon restart. Simply disable it. Windows will remember not to use that device again.
Plug back the serial device and restart Windows.

Solution 2 – edit boot.ini file
Open boot.ini with your favorite text editor (it should be in the root of your C: drive, sometimes hidden as it is a system file). Find a line similar to multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS=”Microsoft Windows XP Professional” and add /fastdetect to the end of the line. This should turn off serial mouse detection on all com ports. You can also use /fastdetect:comx (where x=actual com number) to disable detection on specific com port. You can find the details here. Note that various workarounds on the web suggest using /NoSerialMouse or /NOSERIALMICE instead. This switches will not work as they were created for Windows NT / 2000 and are not allowed in Windows XP.
Save the modified boot.ini file and reboot.

Solution 3 – Microsoft COMDIsable tool
Apparently the 2 solutions above do not work in 100% cases, so the guys at MS have come with their own solution, called COMDisable. It’s a small application designed for Windows Server 2003, Windows XP and Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 (SP3) or later that allow you to turn off serial mouse detection via command line.
comdisable /list will list all available com ports with their status
comdisable /disable COMPortNumber or comdisable /enable COMPortNumber will disable/enable a specific com port you select.
After running the command, simply restart the PC.

As I said before, some of those solutions may not work for a particular case. The good thing is they can be applied all together, in succession. This way I am sure you can leave this annoying serial mouse problem behind for good (as I did).

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