Comments on: Help! Mouse gone wild!

Question: Help! Mouse gone wild!

schyler523 — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 12:01:44 -0800

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.

By: schyler523

schyler523 — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 12:03:42 -0800

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...

By: grouse

grouse — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 12:07:07 -0800

Have you tried using a different mouse?

By: schyler523

schyler523 — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 12:14:27 -0800

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...

By: pmbuko

pmbuko — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 12:22:45 -0800

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)

By: grouse

grouse — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 12:37:23 -0800

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.)

By: Gable Oak

Gable Oak — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 12:38:42 -0800

Also, is it a laptop or a desktop computer?

By: cyrusdogstar

cyrusdogstar — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 15:51:04 -0800

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 :)

By: schyler523

schyler523 — Thu, 07 Jul 2005 12:46:44 -0800

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...