Serious Mouse Problems with Mountain Lion

I'm also having terrible mouse problems. If I let the computer sit for a bit it will become non responsive for about 5-10 seconds of me moving it either on the trackpad or the magic mouse. If I plug or unplug any usb drive it stops working 100% of the time for about 10 seconds.

MBPr 15" with fresh install of ML

I bought a new Mac Mini (i7) and was using an exisiting Logitech wireless mouse (the type that has a tiny USB dongle that you plug in the Mac) It was jerky and annoying. I didn't have that problem on my late 2008 MBP.

After reading through this discussion, one of the solution might be because of a USB hub. I realized I had that dongle connected to the Dell monitor's USB hub which was connected to another powered USB hub before connecting to the Mac Mini. Needless to say, the problem disappeared after I plugged the dongle DIRECTLY to one of the USB 3.0 ports on the back of the Mac Mini. Now the pointer movement is stutter free.

Hope it helps someone.

I've found a wired dell optical mouse from ages ago and plugged in. Started PS5 up and created new canvas. Made large brush800px+ and started drawing. When I tried to look at PS menus couldn't see the cursor.

cmd tab away from PS and back cleared it

Frustrating though, especially when you are in the middle of a big edit and having to faff around multiple times.

Also tried pluggin straight into USB in back of iMac 24, still got same problem following similar test as above

Another source of the problem I encountered with the stuttering mouse... Applications. At one point I was having the problem with CrashPlan or Transmission. My system has only 4GB of RAM and a slow 1TB 5400rpm hard drive. Although I rarely encounter the mouse problem now after doing a lot of restarts and making sure the applications are stable, I think updating the RAM and hard drive will cure most of the problem.

I solved the SAME problem differently...

I configured a magic trackpad to work (bluetooth).

Then, with the trackpad, I clicked on something on my desktop.

Henceforth, the mouse started working as normal again

wierd.... but it solved my problem.

shawn

@drkdev

I am also experiencing problems with my Microsoft mouse. I think we are now running in a fundamental issue: Apple persists in providing UI with smallish items (too small fonts impossible to scale up without decreasing display resolution, too small buttons and UI controls, etc.) while mouse resolution constantly increases to accomodate gamers. And that's even not a gamer mouse I have; this is the simple Comfort mouse! This makes UI almost unusable: you click and the pointer slides away from the smallish target, you try to move the mouse and away it goes, etc. No builtin mouse settings allow to work around. You have to purchase third-party software and try MANY of them to get something that somewhat works but is far from satisfactory. With Decelarate, I got mouse acceleration (that was making the pointer move very fast and jump from places to places on the screen) turned off, but the mouse move is very slow and requires several moves of the hand to get from one edge of the screen to the other. And the scroll wheel is WAY too fast, jumping pages around. It will be easier to use the scroll bars, which is VERY annoying, because they are too small to focus the mouse pointer on them! And back/forward buttons just don't work! Tilting the wheel scrolls horizontally, yes, but EXTREMELY slowly. So I would have to try USB Overdrive, Steermouse, ControllerMate, etc. All of them will give me promising results, I will come to purchase one of them, then some time later, it will become flawky and forum posts will orient me to one of the others! This is what I read in forum posts: somebody having problems with Overdrive and being proposed to try Steermouse or ControllerMate. I don't want to pay 100$ just to get my mouse working!!!

So yes, mouse support on Mac OS X Mountain Lion is very bad. My impression is that the HID builtin driver is VERY BASIC and bare, and there is a dedicated driver for the trackpad. But it is BAD, VERY BAD! That makes MacBook Pro almost the only usable target, with the builtin screen, not an external monitor! How about a Mac Mini with a USB mouse plugged in? With a UI constantly requiring the mouse, with smallish fonts requiring constant zooming in and out, this makes the platform almost unusable for me. The best thing I can do is to start a terminal and write commands there. But doing this, I am better off with Ubuntu, which in addition makes my mouse happy! I am very disappointed and would like to understand HOW people are able to use this OS. As a computer scientist, I find extremely frustrating that an OS is beyond me and would require me to turn away.

okay, maybe I can help you. First: Although this is an Apple forum, Apple does read what is written here. As for the UI, I can't help you a lot with that. Maybe changing your screen resolution to 1024x768 (stretched) might be helpful. I find that if you increase your screen resolution too much, the UI and the scroll bars get tinier and harder to see ( I have an Apple Cinema Display 24" widescreen if that helps). You should be able to set the scroll speed appropriately. Make sure that Universal Access is not turned on *Prefs*universal acess. If it is turned on by accident and you don't know it, it can do funny things to your mouse. I also have a microsoft explorer touch mouse. Cost me all of $40. Plug in the dongle, put in the batteries, works like a charm.

Hmm...maybe not... I have Lion and didn't want to update to Mountain Lion until all the bugs*uh, sorry*features* have been worked out. Under View, there is view options for increasing the text size. I don't know which program you are using with the fonts you cannot see. maybe your mouse needs a little cleaning

I give up for now

JB

Hi,

Thanks for the reply.

For the particular problem of the mouse, installing IntelliPoint solved it. I had to use a hack to work around IntelliPoint not fully compatible with Mountain Lion (http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/58226/does-the-microsoft-intellipoint-s oftware-work-with-mountain-lion), but besides of this, mouse works smoothly now. So Apple's mouse driver is so bare and trackpad-oriented that any USB mouse needs a driver. At least IntelliPoint worked. I was not pleased at all by commercial products such as USB Overdrive, Steeermouse and ControllerMate. You choose one, start to like it a bit, then have problems and are oriented by forum posts to another one! Until yesterday morning, I did not know about ControllerMate at all.

As for lowering display resolution, what's the point, really, of having a LCD if not running it in its native resolution. I cannot believe Apple's Cinema Display does something different in its pixel interpolation that makes a good image even in non-native resolutions, to accomodate OS limitations preventing font sizes to be increased! But this is the only logical conclusion that is coming to me.

Reset your SMC ( System Management Controller )

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3964

This fixed my macbook jumpy mouse.

The SMC reset works but the same problems recur after a while. I conclude that this is a ML issue since I already tried all hardware and software diagnostics I can think of and suggested by others in forums. Sadly Apple doesn't seem to bother addressing this issue. So much for the "it just works" statement.

And did you carry over old stuff by upgrading? or did you start with a clean install of ML. Apple doesn't really make it obvious that you can.

The other things to try are different and maybe even a new mouse and other devices and cables. Start with a clean OS even if it is not your working setup, a bare Apple-only to rule out any and ever ything else you have connected in any way or installed.

Then you can say "ML does this"

These are the things that I already tried:

1. Reseated and replaced (brand new) RAM (8gb and 16gb G-Skills certified mac rams)

2. Reaseated and tested HDD (passed)

3. Reinstalled Lion (all mice working)

4. Tested mice (all 5 of them) in a desktop and 3 laptops (All running Windows) and all work fine

5. Reinstalled Mountain Lion without 3rd party applications (only apps from Apple) and mouse problem returned after a few hours of use.

6. Reinstalled all other apps and the problem persist

7. Tried various mouse, keyboard and trackpad settings to no avail

8. Ran Windows 7 VM and mouse problem not showing in it

9. Did PRAM & SMC resets and booted in safe mode. SMC reset works but problem returns after a day or two or after reboots / wake from sleep.

10. Ran hardware diagnostics (passed)

So that's how I conclude its an ML problem.

"Did PRAM & SMC resets and booted in safe mode. SMC reset works but problem returns after a day or two or after reboots / wake from sleep."

I to have suffered w/ this. While steps above are what clears it for me; the sequence that resolved it is different from yours.

1. Shutdown

2. Reset SMC

3. Immediately before any other re-start just after the SMC reset; reset the PRAM several times.

4. That resolved it for me.

^ That seems to work also for me but the problems start coming back after a reboot or wake from sleep. I hope Apple would look further in to this and provide a fix.