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musicwind95 Author

Level 4

1,282 points

Mouse moves randomly

My mouse cursor moves randomly around the screen, usually all the way across and almost always to one of the screen corners, in which I have hot corners enabled. I had this issue occasionally had this issue in Leopard, but now in Snow Leopard it's more common (maybe 5-10 times an hour). Any suggestions/solutions?

iMac 2.66 GHz standard configuration (April 2008), Wired keyboard & Mighty Mouse, Mac OS X (10.6), iPod Touch 1st Generation OS 3.0, D-link DIR-625 router, iLife 09, iWork 09

Posted on Sep 8, 2009 3:50 PM

142 replies

musicwind95 Author

Level 4

1,282 points

Mar 7, 2010 6:04 PM in response to danashley

Let's add a new factor. All of a sudden, the web page that I was viewing just scrolled itself all the way to the bottom. I could use the scroll bar to "hold" the page in place, but once i let go it went all the way back down. The scroll ball was, of course, not actually spinning. I had to quit and relaunch Safari.

Mar 9, 2010 3:18 PM in response to crezzysue

the white paper as a mouse surface seems to be the solution. I tapped it to my desk and haven't experienced the problem since. I've noticed when I move my mouse off the paper onto the laminated desk surface by accident when my chair is too far to the left and I forget about my paper mouse pad, the flying action happens again.

musicwind95 Author

Level 4

1,282 points

Apr 10, 2010 4:34 PM in response to musicwind95

Update for anyone who cares:

The update to 10.6.3 seems to have increased the frequency of this happening. There's still no definite pattern or reason to its occurrence, except that it seems to be moving further and more frequently now with 10.6.3.

Apr 15, 2010 2:55 AM in response to musicwind95

I've started having the problem of the mouse cursor jumping around after installing SL 10.6 update. It's extremely annoying, I would be trying to delete/drag something and it jumped to another item. You don't know how many times I ended up deleting/dragging the wrong file!
The cursor would be placed in the middle of the screen, and before I knew it, it jumped somewhere else on the screen. If my hand is not on the mouse, I'd have to look for it across the screen!
I figured that it's not the mouse, since I tried both Logitech and Magic Mouse. Same problem.

Message was edited by: island.island

May 4, 2010 8:20 AM in response to musicwind95

Alright, me, too.

I updated to SL as soon as it came out, but I just started noticing my mouse creeping slowly across the screen to the left. I use a Magic Mouse, but it also occurs with my Logitech mouse. I've been searching all over the net for a fix, but I've had no luck yet.

Someone mentioned it could be OSX's mouse acceleration or "precision" preference, but there doesn't seem to be a way to turn this off in OSX.

How do we get Apple to listen to this?

musicwind95 Author

Level 4

1,282 points

May 7, 2010 1:00 PM in response to BuddhaBun

Besides an angry mob wielding flaming Magic Mouse(s)? 😉

It's definitely an issue, but I'd say that less than 5% of mac users even know about these forums. We need to spread the word.

Anti-Poltergeist Mouse people, unite!

🙂

prysm_1

Level 1

0 points

May 7, 2010 5:22 PM in response to musicwind95

Yes, I hate those too, but they actually move randomly they look for places with cheese or some poeple they like peanut butter better.

May 7, 2010 7:03 PM in response to musicwind95

Add me to the list of people who have the random jump of the mouse pointer. The frequency of which has definitely increased in recent months.

musicwind95 Author

Level 4

1,282 points

May 8, 2010 9:42 AM in response to Steven Slupsky

Since 10.6.3 it seems to be happening more frequently. There's still no rhyme or reason to it, but it just seems to happen more frequently.

I've also noticed that at times the mouse is "triggered" accidentally—I have the middle button set to Show Desktop and the squeeze buttons to Exposé All Windows. These functions get triggered from time to time without me doing anything to trigger them—the mouse pointer itself doesn't move in all cases though.

May 9, 2010 6:53 AM in response to musicwind95

I hear you. Squeeze was being triggered so much for me a thought that there was something wrong with my mouse and it became overly sensitive to squeezing. I ran out and bought a magic mouse and I don't have a squeeze problem anymore. It has it's own mind from time to time though.

musicwind95 Author

Level 4

1,282 points

May 14, 2010 2:44 PM in response to Steven Slupsky

As a matter of fact, when the squeeze function activates itself, sometimes I can hear the mouse clicking—the mechanism itself is being affected. Maybe there is a hardware component to this issue after all?

musicwind95 Author

Level 4

1,282 points

May 15, 2010 4:46 AM in response to musicwind95

The side buttons are clicking themselves very frequently now—my fingers aren't even near them, and yet I hear a click-click as my Exposé activates and then deactivates. Very annoying.

May 18, 2010 3:14 AM in response to musicwind95

Finally managed to create an account for this!
MOUSIE JUMP! ME TOO! ME VERY ANNOYED!

I'm taking it with a bit of humor for this bug is very very strange...

I have a brand new iMac i7 27" and this bug pops up randomly.
It is not the Magic Mouse! I have an old-ish mouse with usb here to test when the bug starts to appear: I switch off the magic mouse and plug in the usb-mouse and, voila, mouse jumpie all the same 😟

musicwind95 Author

Level 4

1,282 points

May 18, 2010 4:47 PM in response to CarstenGermer

Recently (last week or two), I've noticed another visual artifact—something that looks like my mouse pointer seems to jump across the screen very quickly, and it usually goes all the way to the edge of the screen, setting off an active corner or bringing up my Dock (which is set to hidden until I move the pointer to the bottom of the screen). The "real" cursor hasn't moved at all, but I'm sure I saw something else moving away from that location. Very strange.

Jun 5, 2010 11:05 PM in response to musicwind95

Musicwind95, do you by chance have a Bamboo tablet connected to your Mac?

Mouse moves randomly