Mouse on the loose

[wildred]

Ive got a cheap compusa brand (MS takeoff) optical mouse. The problem is this; I let go of the mouse and periodically the cursor moves by itself towards the top of the screen or left of the screen even though no physical movement is occuring. I tried another mouse (one with a ball) and it worked w/o problems. Both mice connect via USB. This only started happening after XP SP2. Was wondering if anyone else had this happen, or is it a bad mouse...

[i2c]

some mice (very few now adays) require a driver, if there was a disk you could possibly try installing any driver software that came with it. Shinny surfaces can also effect the effectivness of opitcal mice so try it on a few different surfaces maybe

Im not sure whether it will matter but if youve got it plugged into a USB to ps/2 connector maybe try just plugging it into a USB socket.

i2c

[nihil]

Yes I have had that happen with a genuine MS intellimouse with a ball. Not sure what causes it, some sort of retained memory/delay perhaps.

I checked for malware and found nothing.

Cheers

[wildred]

At first it scared the hell out of me because I thought someone was remotely controlling it so I too did the virus/malware scan and came up clean. I tried diff. surfaces, with the exception of a true mouse pad. I also tried the ps2/usb adaptor both in the ps2 and in the usb, same results. I guess I will have to try another mouse...Walmart here we come!

[.:front2back:.]

Or maybe you have got a GhosT in the house and it's trying to give you a hint of some kind that it's there.

I've had similar problems in the past were i didnt touch the mouse and the pointer on the screen would slowly move around, turned out the stereo in the next room was vibrating the desk thus it was slowly making the mouse move in different directions from the vibration's on the desk..

[nihil]

The machine I had it happen with was a PI/150 with 32Mb of RAM running Win98. Apparently it didn't happen very often, and I only saw it once.

I upgraded the machine with a better video card, 64MB of additional RAM and a 30Gb 7200RPM hard drive, and it has not happened since That is what made me suspect some sort of "lag" effect along the lines of the typematic refresh rate?

Before you invest in a new mouse it might be worthwhile trying a specialist optical mouse mat.

Ordinary mats and different surfaces can produce strange results.

Cheers

[kryptonic]

Ive had the same thing happen before with both ball and Optical. :-/