Help! Mouse gone wild!

July 6, 2005 12:01 PM

My brother-in-law's computer is periodically losing control...

The mouse jumps all over the screen, opening and/or closing programs, resizing windows and the taskbar, selecting/unselecting desktop items. Virus checkers and spyware removers have not yielded any results. OS = Win2k.

posted by schyler523 to computers & internet (8 comments total)

Sorry, I originally wrote several longer more detailed posts in a word processor, but the problem erases my progress...so i gave up and wrote it in directly...

This happens about every 5 minutes and lasts for about 30 seconds...
posted by schyler523 at 12:03 PM on July 6, 2005

Have you tried using a different mouse?
posted by grouse at 12:07 PM on July 6, 2005

I unplugged the mouse during a recent episode, the problem continued...

I tried looking in Task Manager for a CPU usage jump, but this only affects explorer.exe apparently...
posted by schyler523 at 12:14 PM on July 6, 2005

Is this a wired mouse? If so, and the problem continues even though the mouse is unplugged, then the computer may have prank software installed. (not necessarily the linked software)
posted by pmbuko at 12:22 PM on July 6, 2005

Have you tried running the computer in Safe Mode?

You might want to post a HijackThis log here, which will help us see what strange software, if any, is running on your system. (It will help you too.)
posted by grouse at 12:37 PM on July 6, 2005

Also, is it a laptop or a desktop computer?
posted by Gable Oak at 12:38 PM on July 6, 2005

Yea, it sounds like either prank software or someone actually taking over the machine with VNC/BackOrifice/etc and goofing off...if it's the latter, unplugging it from the network will cause the problem to go away. That's a troubleshooting step, not a solution, by the way :)
posted by cyrusdogstar at 3:51 PM on July 6, 2005

Ok...I've replaced the mouse and the problem has gone away so far. I guess that unplugging it didn't stop the input it had already sent, which is what threw me off. Thanks for the help and whatnot...
posted by schyler523 at 12:46 PM on July 7, 2005