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I've been facing a very annoying problem with my Lenovo Thinkpad T430. Occasionally, when I'm performing some tasks that can use a good amount of CPU time, my mouse becomes highly unresponsive. It would take several seconds for it to react whenever I'm compiling a bunch of files for example.

I realize that computers normally become less responsive when they're busy, but this is the mouse. It should be responsive 99.99% of the time even when the computer is busy, at least from past experience with computers. This occurs with the touchpad, wired mouse, and bluetooth mouse, so I'm very sure it's not the mouse's fault.

It's almost as if the operating system does not prioritize the mouse driver higher than the other processes. It also feels like there are just way too many interrupts going on or something. Perhaps the mouse is only a symptom of a much larger problem?

I've recently created a Linux virtual machine (with virtualbox) and had it use all my cores. Whenever I compile any source files (which use up all my cores at 100%) the computer becomes completely unusable and the mouse barely moves. This simply isn't the case on other machines.

This problem only happens with my T430 and I've never faced this problem on other computers. I haven't tried other thinkpads before this so I'm not sure if this is a problem with the Thinkpad (I'm guessing it is however).

EDIT: I cannot confirm for sure, but my brother, who has a Thinkpad X1 Carbon (relatively new) also says he faces the same issue, so I'm really guessing it's a thinkpad thing

EDIT2: I noticed something interesting. I run a Linux virtual machine with virtualbox on this laptop (Windows 7 host), and I was compiling some source code. When compiling the source, the CPU usage goes up to 100%. When this happens, if I was using Windows, the mouse slows down and becomes barely usable. However, if I was using the Linux virtual machine, the mouse is completely unaffected. This would mean that the mouse signals are reaching fine, but Windows (or something) is taking a while to change the cursor's position. Maybe this means that the mouse cursor is being handled by a user process, and not a driver or the kernel? And now that I remember, I used to play games on this laptop. Games take up a good amount of system resources, but I never had mouse issues while playing games. This issue seems to only affect the windows cursor and nothing more.

EDIT3: Please ignore EDIT2 :) It happened in my virtual machine as well

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  • Also check the SMART parameters of your hard drive (e.g. with CrystalDiskInfo) and look to see if there are any signs of a current or impending failure. You could also consider running memtest86. Could be anything but 90% of the time mouse freezes I see on Windows 7 are due to a lower level hardware issue causing the kernel to block on certain operations. In any case 100% of the time it's been a sign of an acute problem somewhere, rather than any kind of normal performance quirk.
    – Jason C
    Aug 6, 2014 at 5:55
  • (And FWIW I've had nothing but Thinkpad T series for 8 years, and have about 5 people in my circle who also own various Thinkpads, and have never seen that occur normally.)
    – Jason C
    Aug 6, 2014 at 5:58
  • I highly doubt my hard disk is the case. I've never had issues with it (and I've had lots of issues with hard disks in the past so I would notice when it happens). I checked with CrystalDiskInfo and my disk is in perfect health. Interesting that you haven't noticed it. Is your thinkpad recent? This problem doesn't seem to occur to thinkpads that came before my model, which is the T430. My colleagues have T420's (which is also fairly recent) and they don't have this problem
    – 9a3eedi
    Aug 7, 2014 at 0:36
  • Happens to me on a 20 cores core i9 desktop cpu when compiling . I traked to a 90% spike load on my nvme ssd... Weird
    – TraceKira
    Apr 30, 2021 at 18:11

2 Answers 2

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Have you tried scanning your computer for possible Malwares/Viruses?

I know some might really think this as an off-topic answer. But, I had the same kind of issues a couple of weeks ago. I was really frustrated and after a lot of research, found that:

There was a process running which occupies all my CPU memory and makes it to 100% and thus, nothing works.

Just see the performance of your system by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Esc and check for CPU Usage in the performance tab. Is it 100% or close to that? If yes, then search for the processes which occupies the highest CPU in your Processes tab and try to identify the problem causing process . If no, then this might be a RAM problem.

Let me know if this was helpful.

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  • I have 2 antimalware programs. They don't catch anything. I also had this issue from the first time I used this laptop, so I highly doubt this is a malware issue. Just to clarify, the CPU usage is caused by me running my own programs. The usage is not the issue. The issue is that the system and the mouse seems to be completely unresponsive as a result of the high CPU usage, which in my experience is not normal because the OS should at least respond to mouse movements.
    – 9a3eedi
    Jun 26, 2014 at 7:54
  • Okay may be in this case. But do search for any abnormal process once. Also, have you tried updating your trackpad driver? There may be some changes in the settings as you suggest, so try that also. You can get the drivers on this link
    – explorer
    Jun 26, 2014 at 9:29
  • I highly doubt this issue is caused by the trackpad driver because it happens with external mice as well. I've just updated the driver anyway just to make sure and it didn't seem to have any effect
    – 9a3eedi
    Jun 27, 2014 at 6:59
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Try this, it worked for me.
Start > Run > msconfig > click Boot tab > click Advanced Options > make sure "Number of processors" shows the number of cores your processor actually has (change it to the correct number if it's wrong)

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  • My laptop has an i7 with 2 cores and 2 threads per core. So just to make sure, it's 2?
    – 9a3eedi
    Mar 23, 2016 at 9:36

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