Reply #6: Guess. [View All]

[cosmicaug]

I would guess it might be a hardware problem. My guess (and it's a guess) is that the most likely suspect would be the button mouse (though I have no idea how button mice work internally, this does resemble the behavior one can sometimes find with joysticks where they sometimes get drifty --sometimes after a little while). From your message, presumably when you unplug the USB mouse you still have this problem which leaves the touchpad and the button mouse as the only remaining possibilities. Is the touchpad built in? If it isn't built in, take it off and see if the problem remains (if so it would leave the button mouse).

Of course, software problems could also cause something like this. For instance, if you had the OS use the wrong kind of mouse it will not be controllable. However, what you describe isn't quite as bad as that so I'm quite sure that's not likely to be the case here (also, the fact that the problem doesn't occur "cold" is somewhat suggestive of a hardware problem --in theory you could deliberately program the input to behave like this or one could have a very bizarre software bug but I'm guessing either option might be highly unlikely).

But yes, if there's some way to disable that button mouse you at least should be able to rule it out or in as a potential cause (and at least retain functional input capability with the other two input peripherals).