Mouse cursor moves jerkily

Since I had my computer to the shop (for virus removal - they couldn't remove whatever I had and had to reformat the HD) my mouse cursor is moving in a jerky fashion when an Internet page is loading or has a lot of animations on it. It isn't this way all the time, for instance Google.com it moves normally, but pages like TCM.com, it's really erratic. At the shop they had a optical mouse plugged in, but at home I have an old-fashioned rollerball mouse which is fairly new and plugged into the PS2 port with an adapter (it won't work in the USB port). I looked in the device manager, but there were no hardware conflicts and it indicated the device was working properly. Also, before taking it to the shop, I had Firefox 3.6.17 installed, but they installed Firefox 7.0.1. Any ideas why the mouse cursor is intermittently jerky and what could be done to remedy this? Thanks in advance.

My system - HP Pavilion 750n, 1.6 GHz Pentium 4 processor, 768 MB RAM.

 

If it is an aftermarket mouse (Microsoft, Logitech, etc.) and Plodr's tip doesn't solve the issue, go to CONTROL PANEL >SYSTEM > HARDWARE > DEVICE MANAGER, find the mouse (mice) in the hardware list and click on "Update Driver".

If this fails, go to the mouse mfr's website, click the "support" option and (if available) download the latest driver(s) for your specific make/model of mouse and keyboard.

This has worked for me in the past on a few issues (esp. Microsoft wireless mice, which can be picky at times on drivers).

Hope this helps.

 

I ran a disk defrag. It seemed to help somewhat. The mouse cursor still acts "sticky" when pages load, but they load faster now. Thanks for the other tips, though.

 

if this is a ball mouse you can open it on the bottom and clean the wheels or open it right up and then clean it...

 

Cleaning it was the first thing I thought to do. It was fairly clean since I've only had it a few months. I suspect it's more of a software problem since it only happens when I'm using the Firefox 7.0 browser.