Computer attention deficit disorder?

[OsakaWebbie]

About a week ago, wwith no changes to my system that I can remember, I started to have trouble with the computer correctly processing keyboard and mouse input (there may be other symptoms, but those are the ones I have noticed). Sometimes it would not notice a key pressed, other times it would miss the lifting up of the key, which would cause that character to be repeated until I pressed another key to stop it. Mouse pointer motion is also interrupted from time to time - the pointer motion will just stop...and then catch up to where I moved the mouse. Yes, I know that slow mouse reaction is not unusual if a computer is really busy, but this all happens even in a basically idle state. A few times the mouse button would get involved - after trying to seleect a section by dragging, subsequent single clicks would just readjust the end of the selected area instead of starting oover. I would have to select some completely different view or something and come back to get my selection to be cleared. And even during heavy multitassking, I have never before seen this strange keyyboardd behavior - the first time I saw a character repeat across my screen I thought a key was stuck, but it happens on any key, at any time. In this message, although I am retyping all missed characters, I am choosing to leave all "runs" of repeated characters uncorrected, so that you can see how often this is happening. So far in this message I haven't had any runs longer than two characters, probably because I am not stopping much to think and I'm a fairly fast typist, so the runs are interrupted quickly by the next key before it gets a chance to make a bigger mess. I hope someone has some ideas about what might be going on - it is really starting to annoy me, and I'm starting to wonder if something malicious might be "borrowing" my CPU or something. Oops! Just now a run happened on the backspace key - that is even MORE annoying, as I had to retype a couple words I didn't mean to erase. Anyway, thanks in advance for any help.

System: Generic brand computer with 2GHz Intel, aboouttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt 3 1/2 years old, with Windows XP Home SP2. (Ah, there went a big run for you to see!)

 

[micker377]

Check to be sure that the plugs for the mouse and keyboard are "all the way" in. Sometimes the plastic shell of the plug won't clear the holes in the backplane for the sockets. I've had to trim a few through the years. If you can, borrow a USB mouse and a USB keyboard. This will eliminate a motherboard suspicion.

 

[OsakaWebbie]

Yup, they're in all the way. The mouse is a USB mouse using an adaptor to plug into the PS2 mouuse port, and the keyboard is USB only and only a couple months old. I unplugged the mouse just now and plugged it back in, but I can still see the problem - it happens frequently enough that about two minutes of computer use is enough to determine if the problem went away or not. I'm pretty sure this is software-related, not hardware, but I'm open to any troubleshooting suggestions.

 

[jlockley]

Mice, at least, die. We named one of our desktops "fluffy" for eating so many of them.
PS2 Ports also go bad. Try a USB mouse instead.
Nothing wireless hooked up? Can have an effect.

 

[OsakaWebbie]

But would my two-year-old mouse or my PS2 port AND my two-month-old USB keyboard both die in the same goofy way at the same time? Not likely.

 

[wolluf]

Anything in event log (run eventvwr.msc)

Have you tried changing the mouse and the keyboard - its the first thing I'd have tried. Changed the USB port the keyboard's using.

Do you have other USB devices - are they functioning ok connected to machine?

You may have one problem causing both issues - eg, bad keyboard or bad mouse - or bad something else.

 

[CdnRecce]

#1 - Get rid of that adaptor. They are a weak link.

#2 - As Wolluf said, input devices (HID) often cause problems when one goes bad, the other is affected.

Use this opportunity to go get a USB wireless KB/Mouse combo you've been lookin' at down at your local PC shop. Should fix-er right up..

1) It won't use any pesky PS2 ports
2) If you have a bad USB port, you can change it
3) If it was your old KB/Mouse that was the problem, you've eliminated that.

Cheers

 

[linney]

How does it behave if you run in Safe Mode for a few minutes? Can you try your Mouse and Keyboard combination in another machine?

Can you repeat the fault on your current machine with a different Mouse and Keyboard. You could even try the On Screen Keyboard available via the Windows Key + U shortcut.

 

[OsakaWebbie]

Some of you guys keep talking as if I have lots of USB ports to play with, but I have actually less than I would desire - I had to give up one device I was using in order to install this new keyboard.

Anyway, my husband and I looked through the processes running and some things like that, and in the process rebooted the machine a couple times. I had, of course, previously tried a reboot when this was happening, but it hadn't solved it. But this time, at least for the moment, it is doing okay after our reboots. We were just about to try Safe Mode when we noticed that it had gotten well. My husband has had a theory for some time that some problems that are not solved in one reboot are solved with two, three, or four reboots - he thinks Windows has some "self-healing" code that works on cleaning up the registry and stuff bit by bit during reboots. I don't know... It is true that since this machine is used as the file and print server for three PCs, I use it for days or even weeks at a time without rebooting, but that keyboard skipping thing had never happened to me before - believe me, I would have noticed.

So, for the moment it looks like there was some mysterious interrupt conflict or something that was repaired with multiple reboots. If the problem reappears, I'll come back to this thread with whatever additional info I can gather.

 

[aich69]

a possible long shot....

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/learnmore/tips/le1.mspx

 

[OsakaWebbie]

Thanks for the thought. You're right, though - it was a long shot, and that wasn't the problem, because it was regular keys (well, any key) that could potentially "stick", and just as often, keys never registered at all (were "skipped"). Thinking as one with a background in EE, it appeared to me that the signals from the keyboard for key-down and key-up (as well as for mouse motions and mouse button actions) were being missed by the operating system. But I had never seen that happen before - normally if the system is busy it just buffers the actions and executes them in order when it can, but in this case it was missing them altogether. But so far, it seems that whatever it was was cured by a series of reboots (one was not enough) - the symptoms have not recurred so far since then. So the cause will probably remain a mystery.