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An odd problem with a jittery mouse

smartcooky

Penultimate Amazing
smartcooky
Joined
Oct 26, 2012
Messages
29,031
Location
Nelson, New Zealand
System is Win 10 Pro 64bit - the mouse is a bog-standard Microsoft wireless USB LED infra-red mouse.

Every so often, the mouse pointer will start to lag as I move it. If I move the mouse quite quickly to get from one side of the screen to the other, the jumps are big, but as I slowly approach the icon I want to click on the mouse jitters back and forth, missing the icon. I have to move it very, very slowly so that the jumps are smaller, until it is hovering over the icon.

I can temporarily fix this problem by rapidly sliding the mouse back and forth on the mouse pad several times. This always fixes the problem but it is only temporary - within anything from a few minutes to a couple of hours, the lag and jumpiness is back.

Now, if this was an old PS2 mouse, I would suspect the ball and rollers needed cleaning, but this an LED/IR mouse - no moving parts. Its almost as if the computer is busy doing something else and is not devoting enough resources to the mouse, but quickly moving it quickly triggers the computer to take notice.

I thought one of the suspects might be a weak wireless signal, so I put the transmitter on a USB extension cord and taped to the desk right in front of the mousepad. This didn't fix it. Also, I have an identical mouse-keyboard-transmitter combination at home, so I swapped them over. The problem remained with the same computer.

At this stage, I'm thinking drivers, but would like to know if anyone else has any ideas before I start monkeying with them.
 
When I heard "Jittery mouse" - I immediately thought "Get rid of the cat!"
 
Maybe go into Task Manager and end processes that are not critical. Try them one-at-a-time and see if stopping a running process helps the mouse.
 
Clean the lens with a cotton swab and some detergent solution (1 drop dish liquid in about a cup of water is enough). Dust and grease buildup from the mousepad can cause the focus to not be very good.
 
alfaniner said:
Sometimes it's the surface that makes it react badly. Maybe try a different mousepad or surface?
Click to expand...

KevinB said:
Possibly dirt or bright light on the mouse mat.
Click to expand...

GodMark2 said:
Clean the lens with a cotton swab and some detergent solution (1 drop dish liquid in about a cup of water is enough). Dust and grease buildup from the mousepad can cause the focus to not be very good.
Click to expand...

I have changed the mousemat and cleaned the lens as GodMark2 suggested. That was about half an hour ago. I have to say that the mouse pointer movement seems generally a bit smoother that it was even when it didn't have the jitter problem

So far, so good. I will update if I have any further problems.
 
I'm curious if you did the mousemat and lens cleaning as separate testable things, or if both changes were done simultaneously.

IOW, was the problem caused by the mat or the lens?
 
William Parcher said:
I'm curious if you did the mousemat and lens cleaning as separate testable things, or if both changes were done simultaneously.

IOW, was the problem caused by the mat or the lens?
Click to expand...

I did both at the same time. I'm in a business situation here, I want to fix it not necessarily spend a lot of time diagnosing the actual cause.

However, I have to say that cleaning lens had an immediate effect on how the mouse operated (smoother and more responsive than before) so I'm inclined to think that it was the major contributor. The mouse has operated flawlessly all afternoon, so I'm hopeful its fixed.
 
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