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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

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149 replies

Nov 4, 2011 4:44 AM in response to Kevenly

This mouse problem is extremely annoying and we are getting off track thinking it only happens on laptops or is about multiple monitors. Like the guy said here yesterday, this is a Lion software problem. I an using a Mac Pro with one screen and a wireless Magic Mouse and the problem is driving me nuts.


I called Apple support yesterday and they walked me through disk pref repair and a "safe boot" and other things and today the mouse is just as erratic and unresponsive as it had been before all that.

Nov 6, 2011 3:37 PM in response to allupons

I have been having these eratic mouse movements since upgrading to Lion. I tried several mice (wired, wireless) doesn't matter. I also have been having problems with my second monitor (not being reconized anymore) I unpluged the second monitor and so far the eratic mouse movements have gone away as reported by several people here. I guess time will tell if this continues to work. I am missing my second monitor but need the mouse to work. Not sure if these two things are related but sure seems so to me.

Nov 10, 2011 9:44 AM in response to Kevenly

Hi everyone.


At the suggestion of users above, I have resolved the jumpy mouse issue by unplugging my second monitor and rebooting. Obviously this is a work-around and not a solution, as I now have a blank monitor sitting next to me.


I still believe the issue is one related to mismanaged hardware resources in Lion, because:


  1. It worked fine in Snow Leopard.
  2. Dual-monitor support was terrible when Lion first launched, who is to say that they've resolved all the issues?
  3. It affects devices that would use the internal system bus (USB, bluetooth, etc).


I am not intimately familiar with the hardware architecture of Apple machines, but here's my best guess of what's technically happening:


Secondary displays (connected via DVI) are running through the "southbridge" of certain machine builds, I believe. If this is the case, the southbridge bandwidth is likely becoming saturated when having to deal with a second monitor being connected. This makes sense as the "hang ups" we experience don't seem I/O or computationally related; I don't have my disk activity or network connections drop when I experience the problem.


Since we can now pin-point and work around the problem, what we need to do now is LET APPLE KNOW. I called support but they suggesting using the feedback form located at the link below.


Apple feedback link: http://www.apple.com/feedback/


If everyone on this thread submits feedback we'll have this issue resolved much faster!!!!

Nov 10, 2011 10:16 AM in response to bonnober

bonnober:


Then I expect you have a different issue, as the topic of this thread is "Major mouse issues in Lion". Most people have similar issues to mine, and several people (including myself) have resolved their problem by unplugging their second monitor.


I hope you find a resolution to your problem. Perhaps you should start a new thread that's more related to your particular issue.

Nov 22, 2011 8:47 AM in response to Kevenly

I have been searching high and low for a solution to this problem - it was driving me crazy. I have 2 mac pro's both running Lion and supporting dual monitors, a dual quad core and a dual hex core. The quad does not have the problem, the hex is a major headache. I tried a magic mouse, and a wired apple mouse - problems with both.


I called support and they had me reset the NVRAM, which seemed to help for a brief period of time. I finally resigned myself to using 1 monitor - but even in that configuration there was still some mouse jumpyness.


Out of the blue I removed the mousepad I was using with the hex core - and so went my problems. I was using an ALLSOP mousepad on both machines, but the hex core's pad had blue swirls on it. I switched to the one I was using on the quad core (basically black) and for the past 24 hours I have not had any mouse jump!


Not a very technical solution, but for me the difference is night and day.

Nov 22, 2011 11:48 AM in response to smcfeeters

I also tried the mouse pad theory and it did not work for me. I use a Logitech wireless mouse on the surface of my desk. I am still using 1 monitor as that is the only thing that has resolved (I mean work around) the problem so far. I have reprted this to Apple. I can only hope all of you have or will do the same as that is the only way it will get fixed is if enough of us complain that this is a real problem.

Nov 30, 2011 8:50 AM in response to Kevenly

I'm using an Apple wired mouse. It lag sometimes and now, seems that doesn't work anymore. Problem start after I install Lion 2 weeks ago. The mouse works fine on my Dell windows 7 machine. And the microsoft mouse works fine on my Macbook Pro, Lion machine... Really don't understand...


I just tried several thing like plug, unplug, plug in the other usb connector. Nothing works. But I just put computer to sleep. Then open it after 2 or 3 minutes and mouse is working again... Wow! Very strange!

Major mouse issues in Lion

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