mouse doing strange things

[mquinn0908]

I have a compaq evo n180 notebook with XP professional and recently it has started doing some strange things with the mouse. You can be working (or the laptop can be idle) and the mouse open the shortcut menu (the user never touhes the mouse) and then a bunch of windows will open up. What is causing this and how can I resolve it?

This happens with an external mouse plugged in and also with the touchpad.

 

[Kocky]

Make sure the correct drivers are installed for the mouse. Also check the mouse isn't dirty inside. Do this by taking out the ball at the bottom and clean the wheels and pisters in there. If this doesn't work try a different mouse. It might also be broken or you have a breach in the cable.

 

[mquinn0908]

I have installed the newest drivers and it is an intellimouse optical mouse so there is no ball to clean. The mouse is only about two months old and up until yesterday was fine. I contacted Compaq and they said that I needed to download and install the latest BIOS and touchpad drivers and then set the touchpad settings to heavy touch so I did that this morning and so far it hasn't done anything weird....yet!

 

[mquinn0908]

This problem has been solved on the laptop in question but now I have two desktops (both running windows xp) that will on occasion jump to another place on the screen. You can be moving your mouse around and all of the sudden it will jump to some other place on the screen and most of the time when it does this it will jump down to the clock. Any suggestions as to what might be going on?

I have scanned for viruses and none were found on either machine.

 

[bcastner]

If these are wireless optical mice:

1. Connect them directly to a PS/2 port, do not use a USB to PS/2 converter. It just does not really work well with mice.

2. Replace the batteries if you have any

3. Make certain if they are wireless that they are on different channels than other users nearby. Since you cannot visibly see the channel settings, just hit the channel change button and resysnc the mouse.

 

[mquinn0908]

These are not wireless mice but they are optical and they are connected to the USB port.

 

[bcastner]

If the installation came with XP-SP1, then I do not have a good idea for you. If you added SP1 then:


In Device Manager uninstall the USB Host Controllers.
Reboot.
Windows will rediscover them and add the SP1 level drivers this time when installing.

 

[llambert2]

Try just the opposite and take the mouse off the USB connection and get a PS/2 adapter ... see if this fixes the issue. Some PC's can't handle more than a couple of USB connectionsa at once...even though they say they can. So take that issue away and see what happens. A PS/2 adapter is cheap and easy to try. Always try the easiest thing first.

 

[TW00Si]

mquinn0908, has this issue ever been resolved?

I'm currently experiencing the same problem described by mquinn0908. At first I thought it might be a wireless frequency issue but, mquinn's problem is on a wired mouse. I'm also using Win XP, updated the intellipoint software but that did not fix the problem. Is there a firmware upgrade for the wireless station itself?

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[maitakeboy]

I have found this to be either a mouse driver issue, but more usually it's a video driver issue, especially after replacing a PS/2 mouse with a USB mouse. Update the video drivers and see if that doesn't solve the problem. Otherwise, it might be time for a new video card.