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Now and then my Mouse cursor will move without me moving the mouse, it only moves in a straight line and only about 1 Inch, relatively slowly and then stops.
Ok, I have run Anti-Virus Software, Trojan Remover Software and Spyhunter but nothing has been found.
Should I worry about this, could it just be a software bug?
Mice with balls {hehe} can have the ball get caught slightly on the inside of the mouse, or a bit of dust can get caught and put the ball under a bit of tension, so it's not just sitting flat.
Gravity takes over at some point, the ball shifts... tension released.. rollers moved.. the cursor moves a little on screen.
Read something about optical mice, dwell time and current fluctuations, can't find it for the life of me though. My cursor would move just a bit while the laser mouse was at rest, stopped after I bought a new UPS with better voltage regulation. Maybe 61 cycles gives an optical mouse the shakes? ;)
If it is a Ghost/Poltergheist it is a very tame one.
Deejay,
Possible, have given it a good old clean - but the mouse balls do seem to get clogged up quick.
Drunken mouse syndrome.
Cant access that on my PC at work (most have something our surfcontrol does not like) - will have a look at home.
drunk mouse syndrome
(Also "mouse on drugs") A malady exhibited by the mouse pointing device of some computers. The typical symptom is for the mouse cursor on the screen to move in random directions and not in sync with the motion of the actual mouse. Can usually be corrected by unplugging the mouse and plugging it back again. Another recommended fix for optical mice is to rotate your mouse mat 90 degrees.At Xerox PARC in the 1970s, most people kept a can of copier cleaner (isopropyl alcohol) at their desks. When the steel ball on the mouse had picked up enough cruft to be unreliable, the mouse was doused in cleaner, which restored it for a while. However, this operation left a fine residue that accelerated the accumulation of cruft, so the dousings became more and more frequent. Finally, the mouse was declared "alcoholic" and sent to the clinic to be dried out in a CFC ultrasonic bath.
Freely reprinted from the Jargon File version 4.4.5
I am on network and I was told that things like that can be one of the network dudes messing with your mind.
That said I have seen it on my home pc and it that was a network dude I would be rally worried. :)
Weird thing is, sometimes my brain doesn'T register it properly, and I jsut get a strange feeling of things beeing wrong with reality, and my eyes start to hurt, presumly because they follow the microsecond jumps of the cursor, without me every beeing really aware that the mouse moves.
Doesn't happen too often, though.
SN
My optical mouse sometiems does a jig
Mine too. But only when I'm drunk ;)
Dayo_UK, if you've tried all the usual things like unplugging the mouse and plugging back in, really cleaning the rollers and the ball and such, you could try firing the machine up in Safe Mode and see if it happens there. If it does it's probably a hardware bug, if it doesn't it might be pointing to a software issue. I assume you haven't installed any naff mouse software that can with it? As you have access to computers at work, perhaps you can bring your mouse into work and try it on another machine - or bring a mouse home and try it on your machine. It's really just a process of elimination, or buy a new mouse.
I don't think it's a trojan or virus issue - I think you'd be seeing much more activity if it were.
Good luck,
2odd...
