mouse problems need HELP

[calleagh]

ok this problem is so odd that i dont think i've ever heard of it before.

i am on my third mouse for a laptop that is a year old. first mouse was a logitech wireless, second was a microsoft wireless, and third is old corded dell mouse. this happens on all three. it "bleeds" through. by that i mean that if i am loading a playlist or playing a game if i click on it instead of queuing song i want it will play another song from another folder that i might have open under the one i'm using thus wiping my playlist or queering up the page i'm on. i've tried drivers. no drivers found even though the current drivers are a version from 2006. also the mouse doesnt open things when commanded. i may have to click something over and over to get what i want. example of this is other bookmarks. i have to click it over and over to get to where i want to go. i cannot use the touchpad because my hands shake too much.

incidentally i had this exact same problem with two pc's. wtf??

[Kulaf]

I am guessing it has nothing to do with the mouse, and is instead a USB problem. Is there a BIOS upgrade available for the laptop, and are there motherboard drivers for it?

[Ddrak]

It will be something else running that's causing it. Try closing stuff in your system tray (near the clock) to see if anything makes a difference?

Dd

[calleagh]

Dd there is nothing running in systray out of the ordinaary. i keep start up items at a minimum.
will check to see if there is a bios update.

[Freecare Spiritwise]

Just a thought but is your touch pad on your laptop active? When the touch pad is turned on, your system basically has two mice and they can interfere with each other!

[calleagh]

Just a thought but is your touch pad on your laptop active? When the touch pad is turned on, your system basically has two mice and they can interfere with each other!

touchpad has been disabled since i bought the laptop.

i called asus tech support, explained the issue, and he says i need to reinstall windows. hello, that's fucking impossible since the dvd player does not recognize disks anymore and i can't back my data up............well over 2k in music files alone. so he says go ahead and try to update BIOS and he will email me instructions. well, true to his word, he sends instructions. but guess what..............it wants me to stick a floppy disk in A drive. LOL i havent even seen a floppy disk in years and i damn sure don't have an A drive. fuck it. i'm over it. it has been years and years since i updated a BIOS.

[Freecare Spiritwise]

A couple points:

1. You should back up your stuff right now. Buy a cheap external hard drive or even a thumb drive. You can get 16 GB thumb drives off the web for like 15 bucks. That should easily hold $2k of downloads since you don't get much for your money.

2. You most certainly could re-install Windows with an external optical drive or even a thumb drive, again both cheap!

But I would still look at:

1. The surface the mouse is on. Once I had weird mouse problems that lasted through several mice because most mice don't like the surface of my desk. I pretty much have to use a mouse pad. Some mice were giving me really weird problems. Easy to test for.

2. The RF dynamics of where your computer and mouse is located. The wireless technology isn't perfect and sometimes you end up with a bad spot where ALL mice have a problem with the way the radio waves are bouncing around. And sometimes you get interference from other devices / appliances/ wi-fi. Easy to test for.

[Freecare Spiritwise]

I'd also try an old wired mouse just to get some kind of baseline, and of course different USB ports as others here have suggested.

[calleagh]

I'd also try an old wired mouse just to get some kind of baseline, and of course different USB ports as others here have suggested.

am using wired mouse already. and back up is going to have to wait. i am on fixed income (disability) and any unplanned expenditures will have to wait.

[Freecare Spiritwise]

So ... three mice on two different systems. The corded one has the exact same problem ... Hmm ...

You're sure it's not the surface the mouse is gliding over? I could put 10 different mice on my desk and they all act wonky without a mouse pad. I hate mouse pads but my desk is physically built into the house so I have no choice.

I also once had a problem where I'd take my hand off the mouse and the cursor would move around the screen by itself. I try different mice and also different computers - same problem. Turns out there's a fan in the room and it's sitting against this little folding table I had. The vibrations from the fan were vibrating the mouse. I'd definitely move it to a different area just for shits and giggles.

So by virtue oif this happening on another system (laptop too?) then I almost think that Dd is on the right track with some software maybe installed on both systems that's interfering with your mouse. People tend to install the same software on all their puters so maybe you installed the same thing on both that's screwing up your mousies. This is really easy to test.

Plug those mice into a friends computer just to rule out that they are not bad! I have seen three bad mice / drives / motherboards / whatever in a row. There's really no way of getting around the deductive reasoning. Well other than blind luck. Best to follow the advice of Sherlock Holmes and start ruling everything out. Then whatever is left over, no matter how unlikely, is the culprit.

I doubt that having obsolete BIOS would suddenly make all your mice stop working. You could check their web site and look at the realese notes for the BIOS to see if it addresses some mouse or USB problem but I doubt it. But it's looking you probably do need to blow out Windows. That and figure out what you are doing that's making all your mice stop working. I would definitely say it's abnormal for more than one system to have the exact same hardware problem at the same time. It pretty much couldn't be random.

I could reinstall Windows for you and help backup your stuff but with the shipping costs you could probably buy a cheap optical drive. Newegg free shipping FTW.

Good luck!

[Ddrak]

Which version of Windows? Win7 happily does a clean reinstall without reformatting your disk - it just puts all the old stuff into a windows.old directory that you can sift through and pull out whatever you need.

Dd

[calleagh]

hmmm not sure of version. ok win7 home premium sp1. dont have an actual version number or if it does i dont see it in SIW.i do have build name which is 760.win7spl_gdr.11408-1631. does that help?

i still have to back everything up though, right?

[Ddrak]

Backing everything up is a good fallback, but no - as long as you have about 20G free on the disk you can install a fresh copy of Win7 and it will put all your old stuff (that it would have overwritten) into c:\windows.old.

You will have to reinstall your apps again after you reinstall Windows, and you should go through the windows.old directory to either save the stuff you want back somewhere else or delete the stuff you don't want otherwise it will just hang around forever taking up space on your drive.

Dd

[calleagh]

ok stupid question #2.............do i have to use win7 disk? i hope not as i didnt get one.

[Ddrak]

Yes.

Dd

[calleagh]

i appreciate everyone taking the time to try to help. will call asus tomorrow to see about getting disk.