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.