My mouse pointer is bouncing around the screen on its own - why?

Question

On my other PC, the mouse pointer is bouncing around the screen. I've been away for a few days and it wasn't doing this before.

The pointer is hopping from spot to spot in what could be a chaotic motion i.e. I can't see a pattern. It hops several times per second and each hop is usually no more than a couple of inches across my (26") screen, usually in a different direction, but over time it's migrating around the whole screen. Both button clicks are also happening: whilst I was pondering on it, it managed to change to the High Contrast display theme.

I've never seen anything quit like it. The nearest thing was way back when I was playing with plotting mathematically chaotic equations.

EDIT

I am not moving the mouse.

NOTE

Although the symptoms appear similar, this is not an exact duplicate of "Why is my mouse pointer moving on its own?" - in that question, the pointer remains on the far right of the screen unless the mouse is moved. In this question, the pointer is flickering around across the whole screen but responds partially to mouse movements, by moving the centre of the flickering around the screen. The only similarity between these questions is that the pointer is not behaving as it should - the actual behaviours are entirely different.

Answer 1

I've solved it. It's fair to say that my office is in a bit of a mess at the moment whilst we redecorate another room. I have a Wacom Bamboo tablet which I hardly use these days. It'd fallen down the back of the desk and my laptop PSU had landed on top of it.

I was going through the unplug-everything-one-by-one routine. I'd already tried unplugging the mouse as soon as the problem manifested itself but that didn't help. I was going through the USB cables, unplugged one and it stopped. When I plugged it back in, it started again. I followed the cable and found the long-forgotten tablet, with the PSU sat on top of it. As soon as I moved the PSU, it stopped. With a bit of trial-and-error I found that it didn't need to be in contact to cause the problem.

Anyway, thanks for the suggestions.

Answer 2

It appears that the surface I was mousing on was responsible for my mouse's jittering. I put my mouse inside an opaque shoebox lid, works perfectly now. Problem solved.

Answer 3

Here's how I solved my problem with the mouse pointer. Windows 7 users. I went into Device Manager, clicked on Mouse and uninstalled the hardware. Then I rebooted the computer. When it came back up again the problem was fixed and I haven't had any trouble since then.

Answer 4

Uninstalling the mouse hardware did not work for me. I went into device manager and uninstalled the USB drivers and then rebooted. That seems to have solved the problem.

Answer 5

My experience might be of limited help. I have a touchscreen enabled HP desktop and run W7 but I never use the touchscreen facility. The runaway pointer began a few months ago. I use a wireless Msoft 1000 mouse. I have I hope rid myself of the problem by unticking that touch facility in mouse in control panel. Try it. It might help.

Answer 6

I had this same problem just now and came across the above suggestions. In my case i am another person with a messy desk. Also, i work on a laptop plugged inot a KVM switch. I had an external 3.5" USB drive in a small enclosure temporarily plugged into the laptop and resting on the touchpad. Apparently the internal movement of the hard drive was being detected by the touchpad and causing the problem. One more possibility to watch out for that could cause this problem.