Mouse hanging but not system !!!

[paul33]

This one's bugging me !

I have a bog standard, slightly dated, Time PC with 500MHz processor, 128m RAM. I'm used to occasional full-on system hangs but recently my mouse has taken to sticking or even jumping around the screen even when I'm not touching it. It goes loopy and even starts repeatedly clicking as menus start popping up everywhere.

Eventually it sticks completely ..... freezes ! However, on most occasions the keyboard is still fine as I can move around with the keys even though the mouse is stuck. On other occasions the whole PC hangs.

I've ran de-frag which I noticed was much slower than usual. I'm running MemDefrag which is keeping available memory at a reasonable level just in case that's the problem.

I've also ran PC Doctor which highlighted some invalid structured ActiveX files (means nothing to me !).

I ran a registry cleaner which rid me of some "badly structured files" and I've got rid of some redundant .lnk files too.

Things seem fairly stable at the moment but I sense it won't last.

Anyone got any ideas or advice ?

 

[grygst76]

What type of mouse is it? Normally mice follow activex hand in hand you can d/l updated drivers for your mouse if it is microsft or update the drivers from another co if it isn't. OR take it apart and clean it you will see the "bars" inside covered with misc crap that needs to be cleaned. Use ethyl alcohol if you have it or 80% rubbing alcohol and that will fix it. Also if you are not using a mouse pad of some sort static electricity can and will wreak havoc on the mouses internals as seen on Microsoft's intellipoint mice.

 

[paul33]

Forgot to mention ...... it's a Microsoft mouse and it is clean as in the rollers are clean. I also use a mousemat.

I re-installed the driver for it just in case but I haven't attempted to update the driver. Surely an out of date driver wouldn't have suddenly caused it to go nuts ..... would it ?

Is there no diagnostic test of any sort that would tell me the problem was/is mouse driven ?

 

[grygst76]

go to the mouse options in control panel and play around with the settings that are their or I would see what is trying to "grab" that irq normally ps2 mice are given 12 as an irq but under some circumstances they are not. I notice when my modem is dialling or disconnecting my mouse slows down and all other weird things. Besides that some so called "memory managers" do nothing to help try disabling your memory manager memdefrag and see what happens. Remember
the microsoft rule "I do not like to share".

 

[paul33]

Why does my Free RAM level eventually drop so low and what would happen if it ran down to zero ....... I'm not running anything other than IE ?

If I wasn't running MemDeFrag and it wasn't kicking in at 10mb and boosting up to 50mb then surely it would drop to zero ...... and hang ?

Neither the PC nor the mouse has "hung" since running this program in the background so, as a novice, this would suggest it's doing some good !

 

[grygst76]

did you try it? well IE is notorious for swiping memory whenever I use it my recourses aost of the time always drop but never to zero when your system goes low on memory I would check what is running when that happens but remember your mouse is a tsr meaning terminate and stay resident it requires memory to function i.e

 

[paul33]

Aaaaaaahhhhhh, it did it again !

After two days of stability, the mouse started sticking again. Sensing an imminent crash, I hit Ctrl+Alt+Del and saw something I hadn't seen before ...... "Security Error".

Shortly afterwards, everything froze up !

What's "Security Error" about and is that the source of my problem ?

 

[paul33]

When I subsequently rebooted, I got a message during bootup saying that no mouse had been detected and that I could install one now if I wished.

I hit return key to complete boot-up but the mouse cursor was stuck ...... although the PC was fine otherwise !!!

I've just re-installed the intelli-mouse driver from the original disk and I'm moving again (after reboot) but confidence is low !!!

 

[paul33]

After repeated hangs, the machine refused to boot !

All the lights were on but the monitor said no signal input being received ..... looked bad !

My tower unit was at floor level with only about 10cm clearance from a wall. There was also a hot heating radiator within ahalf a metre so I lifted it and it was covered in dust ! There was also a lot of dust inside the casing so I cleaned it all out and I'm now running the unit high on a shelf with better ventialation.

I've had no problems since. Could this have been a over-heating problem ?

 

[grygst76]

There is your answer remember in my other post about the mouse internals acting up? It could have very well been that!! also when you recieve the security error in task manager go to your system information and look up running tasks and look for ir there it will point to the app that is implying the error