Cursor Freeze

My cursor has recently started to act up, occasionally freezing for 1-2 seconds and then releasing. Sometimes it freezes up longer, which I "fix" by doing a hard boot.

I think it started after the last Windows Update on May 15.

Several sites suggested updating the driver, but I'm not sure they're not covers for downloading viruses/malware. Neither Dell nor Microsoft seem to have a recent driver update for the mouse I'm using.

Several scheduled anti-virus scans have run since the problem started and I've also done a full scan without anything being found.

Hardware/software details:
Computer: Dell Inspiron 545
OS: Windows 7
Mouse driver (from Microsoft): 6.1.7600.16385

Bob

 

bobspicks...

First thing I do when something like this happens is open Task Manager. Then I click on the Processes tab and then sort the processes by CPU usage. Take a look at the top 5 there, and chances are pretty good there will be at least a clue to what's going on.

If you can, would be nice to see what's there in a screenshot...

One other thing that helps is to clean your hard drive of unnecessary files. Personally, I usually limit this to running daily a cleaner to remove temporary internet files. However, recently I have been using a cleaner to remove temp files (leftovers from installation and so on) too. I believe these are usually referred to as Temp files or Windows temp files in cleaners. I don't use registry cleaning features of cleaners.

This type of problem can be related to a start up program which is set to start on boot. To check this, you can boot to safe mode and see if the problem persists. If not, then one of your startups is likely part of the problem. Since startup programs don't run during a safe mode boot, this is a good way to eliminate them as a source of a problem or determine that one of them is the problem.

 

Thanks for that donetao.

In this case sounds like it's intermittent freezing. I have seen hard freezes (who hasn'trolleyes?) where Task Manager wouldn't open from keyboard or mouse.

Again, maybe I missed something but I think these are mostly short cursor freezes. I think Task Manager should open between them or has when I have been in this kind of situation...

 

I ran Task Manager while the freeze occurred. The top 5 processes never changed and the system was idle 98 - 99% of the time.

I don't have a wireless mouse.

Bob

 

Hey Bob, does your mouse have the standard plug in or is it a usb plug ?

 

Problem solved!

It was a loose usb cable.

Thanks for your help.

Bob