Thanks to everyone that responded. It turns out that the Turbomouse 5 (four
button trackball) was the culprit. It also doesn't like my CD-ROM drive,
but that wasn't part of it. Now the only trouble is logging in, root
doesn't work and su neither. I saw an earlier post about editing password
files so I'll consult that before I post another newbie question.

Thanks again for all the help.