Mouse moves randomly

still no idea how this happened on a freshly installed mb/mbp systems eh?

Just to add my weight to this in the hope that Apple do something about it.
I'm on a Macbook Pro, with a Logitech mouse, using Parallels Desktop 5 and SL. I have had this problem with Leopard, Parallels 4, SL and parallels 5. At home I use just a Macbook with the trackpad.

At home I have no problems.
At work, my mouse regularly relocates to one of the hot corners. this is very frustrating as it can lead to my parallels exiting altogether, or to expose throwing a wobbly. I've tried different mice, and always with the same issue.

I find that it is more apparent and more frequent when I am using a lot more of the memory, for example, running photoshop inside Parallels (work licence issue before you criticise me!), in this instance I have to unplug the external mouse, use the trackpad, and follow a particular path across the screen, else I cannot do anything.

Apple, come on, there is clearly an issue here, sort it out!

I started getting this problem early this evening after I'd returned home having used the laptop away from the home with all my devices unplugged and using the trackpad.

The mouse would at points become completely uncontrollable. Especially when the computer was doing something, like backing up with Time Machine.

I started playing around with things, trying to fix it myself. I Unplugged my Belkin powered USB and that solved the problem. However, when I was round the back of my desk fiddling, I noticed that the power supply cable was coiled up around the two plastic hooks: I hadn't unwound it since I got in hours ago when the problem started. So I unwound it and let it fully extend. Mouse acting normally. Plugged the Belkin USB hub back in: mouse still working normally and still is.

So was it the wound up cable or the USB hub? Either way it appears to be fixed, its been half an hour of busy computer use and still all clear.

Hi!

I seem to have the same problem.
I had a Samsung 22" display as a first monitor and TV as second and everything was fine. Now I got a 25,5" as first monitor and moved the 22" Samsung to secondary, and my mouse starts jumping every few seconds when the second monitor is turned off. As soon as I turn it on everything is fine.
Seems very strange to me. What difference does it make to the video card whether the monitor is turned off or on?
This is on a Mac Pro with Radeon 4870.

Well, I'd just like to report a few things on my end:

1. The trackpad cover did not work.
2. I took my macbook pro into the Apple store and turned it in for repair. They said they would replace the trackpad and run some other diagnostic tests to see if they could diagnose the issue.

I received my laptop a few days later with supposedly a new trackpad and I'm glad to say that I haven't had any issues (yet) with the mouse pointer moving on it's own, the responsiveness of the trackpad is excellent. I have noticed it significantly because before the replacement, any little bit of moisture would cause the trackpad to "go dead". But this time around I can have slightly "clammy" hands and it seems to work fine.

So, I guess my only advice here would be to have the trackpad replaced and hopefully this will work for some of you.

Take care and thanks for all the input.

Apple does not monitor or care about either this mouse problem or this board. Putting posts up here is like peeing into the wind.

I just found this topic and have read all the posts with interest. I am not suffering from the problem but I did once see something like it on a G3 iBook and I found out exactly what was causing it, though I am not sure how it was causing it. One evening I opened the iBook and as soon as I touched the trackpad the pointer started dancing round and clicking on stuff by itself. It was on mains power and in the same 4-way mains socket there was one of those purple glowing plasma ball lamp things. If I turned off the lamp then everything was normal, turn it back on and the cursor would start jumping around. So could it be that some of these reports are due to the same kind of electrical interference? Just a thought.

I've been having this same problem with the mouse moving around randomly. I've had the MBP repaired by apple (new track pad). upon receiving the MBP back everything worked just fine - for about 24 hrs. It's still happening and I've noticed that it doesn't matter if I'm using the track pad or my blue tooth mouse OR a wired mouse. My guess is that this is a motherboard related issue or a connection issue inside of the MBP.

I work on PC's for a living and have seen strange things related to this issue on the PC laptop side. For instance, on one of the issues, it turned out to be a bad hard drive. Weird stuff is all i can say about that.

I recently posted about not being able to get my iMac to sleep. The first seven months or so, no problem, the last of months it sleeps inconsistently.

After installing, based on recomendation, PleaseSleep it will now sleep and stay sleep if I manually force it to sleep. I still won't auto sleep however.

I came across this thread today and look at my mouse pointer - IT'S MOVING! I don't believe I have ever noticed it before today but the pinter randomly moves (in very small distances). Even if I turn off the magic mouse the pointer is still slowly moving/jumping. My guess is that the movements are roughly 5-20 pixels at a time.

I am not sure the two issues are entirely related either or if that sort of movement would keep it from sleeping, but I wanted to say, ME TOO on the mouse/pointer movement.

Very strange, but after reading this entire thread it doesn't seem like a particular mouse issue.

I have the same problem with the mouse moving randomly. I move my mouse and it goes whereever it wants to. It started several weeks ago. I have tried two different wireless mouses, changed batteries and turned off the mouse and shut down the computer and still no change. There must have been something in an update that caused the problem since it stated not to long ago for me. It gets me upset when I am on a page and there are things I am doing and the mouse is moving around and I click thinking I am hitting what I want and it clicks on something else. I have to then either close that screen or hit the back button to get back to where I was and start over. I am glad to see others are having the same/similar problems and it is not just me.

I had exactly the same problem - the mouse pointer would suddenly skittle across the screen for no reason - this had been going on since I bought my iMac in Jan 2009. I solved the problem 6 months ago; up until then I had used a variety of mouse mats, some plain but most with patterns, but then I started using a plain piece of white paper!! Ever since then NO PROBS!! Well worth a try if you're having this problem as I have not had a scrap of trouble since using white paper.