Desktop and mouse goes bezerk

[RSeymour]

I have an bizzare problem with several of the machines in my department. Just occasionally the mouse will fly wildly around the screen apparently performing tens if not hundreds of mouse clicks, selecting and sometimes closing windows, changing desktop settings and generally making the machine unusable for about 15 seconds. Once it has done it's thing it settles down with the problem not recurring for several days/weeks at a time. Mouse drivers have been replaced with no apparent difference.

All are IBM Thinkpad's of varying models with at least 128Mb RAM and are used as Oracle and SQL 2000 developement machines. They are running fully up-to-date versions of Norton AntiVirus 2001 with scans performed regularly and are otherwise perfectly predictable, stable machines. All are Windows 2000 Pro with SP2.

Any ideas out there? Some of the guys have lost work due to this problem closing unsaved windows and they are not happy (as you can appreciate!).

Thanks

 

[gpalmer711]

I have experienced this before and It was due to the Hardware Acceleration Being set too high on the Display settings. To change it right click on the desktop and select properties. Then click settings then click the Advanced button. Click on the troubleshooting tab and reduced the slider bar to about half.
This should help

 

[RSeymour]

Thanks, I'll give it a go.

 

[davewright100]

Hi,

A few (about 30%) of our users (myself included) have experienced this issue on Dell Latitude C600's. We have eventually convinced Dell to admit that this is a known issue with the "palm rests" i.e. the bit of plastic that surrounds the touchpad. The theory being that the plastic presses down on the pcb and corrupts the signal or causes false readings.

It may be worth having a word with IBM.

N.B. the touchpad is made by Synaptic

 

[tnrcc11]

Hi RSeymour and all,

I used to work for a company that every one of the TPs had a problem of the cursor moving to the left and up but no mouse clicks would occur. IBM's Tech Support claimed it was the mouse drivers causing the problems but installing the latest drivers did not correct it. After weeks of prodding, an IBM Tech Support person slipped up and admitted it was a design flaw much like 'davewright100' said about the Dells. We were then told to send the laptops to IBM for repairs but the turnaround time would be about *two weeks*. If your's are under warranty, have IBM fix their problem.

Keep digging and good luck.