mouse pointer moving on its own

Question

After two months of working correctly, I am experiencing an strange and very annoying problem. My mouse pointer is moving on its own. If I move the mouse to the left, as soon as I stop the movement, the pointer runs again to the far right. This makes the mouse totally unusable.

The mouse device is an optical USB mouse.

It is not a problem with the mouse itself. I have tried with another mouse, same problem. (both mice are OK, I have tried both mice on my laptop, both worked perfectly)

Have tried different surfaces, too. Same problem.

System is Windows XP Pro SP3. Computer is a desktop PC two months old.

I suspected it could be a problem with the mouse driver. But both mice are from different brand, so I suppose they use different drivers.

What else can I try? any suggestion?

Answer 1

What surface are they on? Cheap optical mice can really be thrown off on some surfaces.

Answer 2

I have solved the problem. I am explaining what I did, for the record. Hope this helps someone else. I don't know exactly what step did solve the problem, anyway, here is the complete things I did.

I first changed different settings in mouse control panel. I set a lower pointer speed and disabled the enhanced pointer precision setting. And I disa bled the device.

I restarted the PC.

After restarting, I enabled the device back.

Now the mouse works correctly. Although its speed is a little lower.

Answer 3

Make sure there's no dust bunnies blocking the laser's point of exit from the mouse! This happens to me all the time.

Answer 4

I had a similar problem. See http://superuser.com/questions/48678/microsoft-optical-mouse-cursor-moves.

I selected the answer which had to do with a dark background, and it seemed to work

However, just this week I had to replace my mouse also as it failed completely.

I believe there were 2 proper answers: Black background and : failing mouse

Answer 5

I came to our computer club and set up, then found that the mouse was erratic, always working its way to the top left of the screen. Very irritating.

I didn't have the problem at home, so I knew it wasn't the mouse OR other hardware OR software! The problem was simply the kind of mat I was using, a sort of plastic pad.

Answer 6

I think that when you slow things down, they work better.

My laptop does similar things, I use the built-in mousepad and I always have to find the pointer. I notice that when I am typing, the typed text changes position so I might have part of the text here and the rest of the text

here.

Answer 7

This will be a solution for only a very few. About a year ago I bought a wireless optical mouse. Once again (I had one before) after a few months I had trouble with it, so I said, "@#*#%@^"; I've had it with wireless. I'll get a corded optical mouse, and did so.

Well, my corded mouse after about a year started acting up. The mouse pointer would dance a little jig whenever I stopped moving it. At intervals of about a second or so it would have a quiet spell before it started dancing again. I tried every answer listed above. No luck.

Then I noticed that there was a device that looked like a flash drive right next to the USB port I was using for the mouse and it was flashing at about the same frequency that my mouse was jigging. I pulled it out; it wasn't a flash drive; it was the receiver for my wireless optical mouse that I neglected to remove when I tossed the wireless mouse. My mouse pointer is now rock steady.

I know this is a very unique solution but it might help some of you.

Answer 8

I got a wireless optical mouse and also experienced the same problem. The cursor moves on its own even if I stopped moving the mouse. I use wood for the surface. Before I saw this article, I thought that the problem was because of the surface I'm using. The mouse works perfectly fine every first use; the problem comes some time afterwards. So then, the problem is not with the OS, not with the platform, and also not with the surface. It's the mouse. I call it mouse fatigue.