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Kevenly Author

Level 1

25 points

Major mouse issues in Lion

After installing Lion, I'm having very bizarre mouse behavior. Basically the cursor randomly shoots across the screen or disappears and re-appears in the corner. It's a huge hassle. I thought my mouse was going bad, but I boot into Windows and it's just fine, business as usual.

I found several threads on other forums with people describing the same issue after installing Lion, with all kinds of different mice. So this is not unique to my system by any means. Personally I use a Targus Bluetooth Mouse for Mac, as I have for three years. It's a great mouse and I love it, as it has lots of buttons and a round touchpad area in the middle. It works for scrolling all directions and has always worked like a charm. However, with this mouse in Launchpad also when I try to side scroll, it only goes right. I swipe the mouse's scroll conrol the the left, it scrolls right. Any sideways scrolling just goes to the right. However it scrolls properly everywhere else (finder, iTunes, Safari, etc).

While that issue may be unique to this particular model of mouse, the wild flitting about of the cursor is again being widely reported in other forums, but I'm not seeing anything here about it. One fellow at MacRumors said an Apple engineer has requested various logs about it and is working on the problem. I hope that's true because this is pretty awful so far, making it very difficult to use the computer.

MBP 2.8 i7, Mac OS X (10.7), iPod Touch 2nd Gen

Posted on Jul 23, 2011 1:38 AM

149 replies

Aug 17, 2011 1:13 PM in response to Swiss Mann

OK, I tested it with a single monitor. No dice. I can reproduce it 100% of the time and partially characterized it. The easiest way is to do the following:

- Load Safari

- Position your mouse pointer int he middel of the Safari window.

- Scroll the window with the Magic Mouse.

- Wait for the scroll bars to fade away.

- Wait for about 1 second (I was thinking it had to be a small window. Not true I think).

- "pop" the mouse. By "pop", I mean a quick start.

The mouse will move all the way to whatever corner you are moving toward. This effect is highly linked to scrolling a window/hiding the mouse ponter and such. There seems to be a timer that resets an acceleration factor whenever a window is scrolled and the scroll bars hide. Perhaps it is a power thing as well. The Magic Mouse is powering down? Moving the mouse rapidly forces the position to a specific screen corner (divide by zero? Perhaps the scrolling creates a nil ponter that is not handled correctly?).

Once the "jump" happens, another wait/scroll/mouse hide is required for the effect to be reset. Likewise, "hiding" the mouse will reset the effect. For example:

- Load Safari

- Go to this complaint input field.

- Press any key to "hide" the mouse pointer.

- "pop" the mouse. By "pop", I mean a quick start.

The mouse will move all the way to whatever corner you are moving toward.

I am starting to think the wait simply allows some power-savings mode to activate and we are seeing the impact of Lion starting coms up with the Magic Mouse.

Aug 17, 2011 2:02 PM in response to Steven Noyes

For me, the mouse can be just sitting there. I will move it to a window, start typing and then try to use it to submit. By the time I go back to the mouse it's already on the top right corner of my screen and the mission control pops up.

Aug 17, 2011 2:07 PM in response to djjay0131

When you type, the mouse pointer hides. My guess is the Magic Mouse also goes into a low power mode. When you move the mouse, you trigger the bug and find your mouse in the upper/lower right/left corner.

The mouse did not jump while you were typing, it jumped when you moved the mouse.

Aug 17, 2011 8:05 PM in response to Kevenly

I try to replicate what Steven says in Safari but my mouse seems fine then. Also what djjay0131 describes is not happening with me either. Sorry. What's the common pattern?

Aug 22, 2011 11:31 AM in response to Kevenly

I am experincing this issue. It reminds me of PCs old days when your system bus was overloaded with components talking to each other and your human interface devices took a back-seat to the data transfer.

Aug 23, 2011 6:33 AM in response to Kevenly

Same problem here on my 2010 15" MBP. Stock hardware other than 8GB ram upgrade 8 months ago. Never had this problem until upgrade to Lion this summer about a month ago. Problem persists on 10.7.1.

Aug 23, 2011 7:09 AM in response to emekaanyanwu

If you turn off the option to hide the scroll bar, do you still have the same problem? Mike

Aug 23, 2011 7:31 AM in response to youngmacdonald

I just disabled it now, and will report back in a day or so. To be clear it's on "disabled" now, does "when scrolling" help fix the problem too? It was previously on "automatically based on input device".

Aug 23, 2011 8:28 AM in response to youngmacdonald

The problem continued to occur even after I disabled scroll bar hiding, even after I restarted the computer. I should also mention that this included random gestures like scrolling between desktops and bringing up launchpad.

I just got off the phone with Apple Care and the guy on the phone advised me to perform some sort of hardware reset by booting up with COMMAND-OPTION-P-R held down and letting the computer chime twice. So far so good but it's only been a couple minutes. We'll see.

Aug 23, 2011 9:50 AM in response to emekaanyanwu

I think I tried that a few weeks ago to no avail, maybe I should attempt it again later, since the 10.7.1 update see if there is any effect.

Oct 15, 2011 12:35 PM in response to Kevenly

After looking around on various forums for a solution to the maddening mouse and trackpad issues on my MBP 15" ( 10.7.2 ), I think I've stumbled onto a fix, at least it has worked for me:

Go into "System Preferences" "Trackpad", and then UNCHECK every single option. Then, one by one reincorporate the options, starting with the ones you feel you absolutely need.

Hopes this helps!

empraxis

Level 1

0 points

Oct 15, 2011 4:26 PM in response to Vinster777

Thanks for the suggestion, Vinster. Unfortunatley is doesn't work for my Trackpad/iMac combo. Please let us know if you continue having success, or if it was just temporary. Every time I try some new remedy it seems to work for a little while (in truth, that's probably my wanting it to work real bad) but inevitably the bug returns.

Oct 16, 2011 5:59 PM in response to empraxis

It WAS a temporary fix........really would be nice if someone from Apple would get on this issue.

Oct 25, 2011 7:42 AM in response to Kevenly

I am having an odd Mouse behavior with a Logitech Anywhere Mouse MX (10.7.2)

Mopving the Mouse pointer feels like a Remote Desktop Conection compared to when using this mouse on Windows 7.

I also tried SteerMouse but it is either fast and inaccurate or to slow. Its just tedious to work with the Mouse 😟

Oct 28, 2011 9:38 PM in response to Kevenly

Unfortunately I have the same problem, both with Bluetooth trackpad or wired apple mouse. Mac Pro, dual screen setup. Works fine until I put it to sleep. When it wakes up, jumpy mouse pointer, same as everyone else. Any fixes yet?

Major mouse issues in Lion