Itunes causing mouse skipping/hooking and display freezing every 5 seconds

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Level 1

41 points

Itunes causing mouse skipping/hooking and display freezing every 5 seconds

Hi all

I have a clean installation of Lion (not upgrade from SL) everything running as smooth as vanilla ice cream. The only problem I have is with Itunes.

When I run Itunes (blank library) every 5 seconds it hooks the mouse ie. causes the mouse to stutter. It also hooks the display every 5 seconds I tested by importing one mp3 into my blank library and the song play fine without skipping but when I open visualiser, the visualiser freezes every 5 seconds for just a mere second but it happens consistently every 5 seconds. I downloaded the latest version of Itunes and the same problem exists. Never ever had this on Snow leopard and it's the very same hardware.

I've checked disk permissions and everything but to no avail. I then imported my existing library and have the same problem. Not much info on the web about this and I wonder if anyone else has noticed this occuring or if anyone has any suggestions on what I could try to resolve this. Right now it's unusable, I cannot listen to any music while I am working because it will drive me nuts with the mouse skipping and sticking every 5 seconds.

Hope someone can offer some insight or solution.

Thanks in advance.

Mac OS X (10.7.2)

Posted on Dec 8, 2011 12:40 AM

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Answer 1

MKZA Author

Level 1

41 points

Dec 8, 2011 2:20 AM in response to MKZA

What I have tried so far without success

- Removed "Quartz Composer Visualizer.bundle" from Itunes plugins directory (no change)

- Set Itunes to start in 32 bit mode (no change)

- Updated to latest 10.5.1 (no change)

- Disabled all network access for Itunes (no change)

I checked again and it appears to be happening every 2.5 - 3 seconds and not 5 seconds as I originally posted.

Every single other app is running smooth as ever, just itunes that is giving me grief.

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Answer 2

MKZA Author

Level 1

41 points

Dec 9, 2011 12:02 PM in response to MKZA

For those interested or also experiencing this I finally found the problem.

The problem is related to the kext "AppleUpstreamUserClient.kxt" I only found this out after a LOT of Googling.

The trick is to rename the kext and repair permissions and voila, no more skipping mouse.

To rename:

----------------

cd /System/Library/Extensions/

sudo mv AppleUpstreamUserClient.kext AppleUpstreamUserClient.kext.old

When you do future OS updates it could restore the kext so you may have to disable it again if you start having the skipping mouse problem again. I hope it works for you if you are experiencing this problem.

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Answer 3

Mar 9, 2012 11:31 PM in response to MKZA

Thanks so much MKZA! I've been dealing with the problem for a while and your solution worked wonders! Cheers!

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Answer 4

Mar 10, 2012 3:53 PM in response to timothyta2

Well I guess I spoke too soon. After a couple of hours of listening to music in iTunes with no problems, the mouse "skipping" problem is back.

It actually seems related to my second display (On a mini-displayport to DVI adapter output) and iTunes than anything. Unplugging the display port adapter stops the iTunes skipping. So I guess I have to choose between iTunes and my second monitor. 😁

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Answer 5

MKZA Author

Level 1

41 points

Mar 12, 2012 5:04 AM in response to timothyta2

Hi Timothy

There does seem to be a number of problems on Lion with dual monitors, do you still get the mouse skipping when you only have one monitor connected / active?

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Answer 6

Mar 12, 2012 8:47 PM in response to MKZA

No, it's fine with one DVI connected display. Disconnecting either the DisplayPort to DVI adapter from the computer or unplugging the second monitor (Samsung) from the electrical outlet eliminates the problem. As long as the second monitor is powered on everything is ok, it's turning off the second monitor that causes the mouse skipping.

There is more on it here if you're interested...

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1965949?start=0&tstart=0

(This one is not a "new" problem or necessarily related to Lion, as you can see since the first post was from 2009, which coincidentally was the year DisplayPort appeard on Macs if I'm not mistaken).

The problem exists even if iTunes is not open, I recently realized as my mouse has become way more accurate on the desktop! Having iTunes open does make the mouse skipping 10X worse though!

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