Hyperactive mouse
 

Hi,

My (PS/2) mouse has problems since this afternoon. I thought first it was dusty, but my mouse is continuously hopping around my monitors right now, making it rather difficult to navigate around in my computer.

Before, my mouse froze occasionally, but this was easily fixed by replugging the mouse in my computer. Unplugging my mouse makes no difference this time: my mouse just keeps on moving.

Do you guys reckon this is a hardware problem on my mother board, or rather a software problem (e.g. a virus).

- Poly.

PS: Just recalled - my computer is having problems with the shift for quite a while now. Some evenings, my system keeps on pressing the shift down. Particularly annoying when cleaning out my document folder: you delete way too many files at a time due to too big selections. Effective, though ;).

Plug in another mouse; see what happens.

Are you on a laptop? If you are, the mouse problem may be one of two likely things. First, you might be inadvertently touching the touchpad or 'nipple' pointing device that's built in. Second, the keyboard 'module' could be damaged. Many laptops have the keyboard and built-in pointing device share at least some of the circuitry, so this could explain why you are experiencing problems with the mouse and keyboard.

Try turning off the built-in pointing device, if you can, and giving your keyboard a thorough cleaning to ensure there's no foreign matter in there that might be causing problems. Occasionally, the component that makes contact under each key (often a little rubber 'cup' with a patch of conductive material inside) will wear out. On a desktop, you can sometimes scavenge replacements from another keyboard, or even replace the keyboard outright, but on a laptop, it's more involved.

Another thing you could try, whether you're on a laptop or desktop machine, is to use an alternate set of input ports. Since you said the mouse is PS/2, and most keyboards these days are either PS/2 or USB, I'd get a USB to PS/2 adapter (I bought one a couple years back so I could connect my PS/2 keyboard to my PDA via USB host) and try plugging your mouse (and keyboard, if applicable) into that. If everything works, you can be confident that it is probably an issue with the port circuitry or (if a laptop) the issue I mentioned in the first paragraph.

Hi,

It's just a 5 years old desktop computer, no laptop. Yesterday night, the problems ceased as sudden as the problem showed up. Just before that, my mouse reacted on key presses as well.

I hope it will stay this way till I get myself a new computer, or I'll buy a PS2/USB adapter as lectric suggested.

Thanks for the help.

Clean out your hard drive. I've had a problem like this and it was caused by my pc not having anough free space on the HDD. A temp fix is a defrag. depending on how big your HD is, I would give yourself about 2-3 gigs of free space. I always try to leave myself with 15% of my overall disk space free.

If that doesn't help, run a crapware check. Then try a sys restore. Then if that doesn't work, then get a laser mouse like all the cool people.