the drifting arrow

[HellboyOne]

Every once in a while, the arrow that I normally control with my mouse or Wacom pen will mysteriously start drifting in one direction, very slowly. Normally, I'd look to see if I left the pen on the tablet and it was rolling or I was moving it or if my elbow was nudging the mouse. But, and it just happened like 20 seconds ago, none of those things happened. Any ideas? (Besides ghost nerds.)

I was watching a YouTube video at the time and was completely hands-off..

[Gorgonzola]

I've had that happen with my mouse once or twice. Is your mouse an IR one, or one of the older trackball kind? I have an odd suspicion it's a bug or something with the IR reading funny. Never had it happen with the wacom though, but I've had other freakouts out with...usually with trying to move the mouse and finding the pen was still being registered on the tablet somehow.

[HellboyOne]

It's happened maybe 5 times total since I upgraded my computer (about a year and a half ago?). Mouse is normal, old mouse I've had for a decade but my tablet, also old, uses a serial-to-usb adapter. Could that be something?

[Gorgonzola]

I did some quick research about it, and it doesn't seem to be something that has a conclusive solution. A lot of people experience it on laptops if they have both the touchpad and a third-party mouse installed, since it creates a resource conflict or something like that I think. That's probably the only reasoning I had seen for it though.

Also noticed it seems to happen a lot on Dell machines, or more specifically Dell laptops. I have an HP desktop, so I don't know what the heck is up with me, but it might help you though.

In anycase, I've seen a number of solutions. Some people say to reinstall your BIOS driver, some others say to reduce the speed of the mouse or scrolling. I have seen one thing though that looks sensible. Someone suggested it's a corrupted mouse driver and needs to be reinstalled. It sounds like you had gotten your mouse from some other source than the original computer, so that may be the solution?

This is a really bizarre situation, I wish there was a more definitive solution. Maybe one of the Tech gurus on this forum can chime in?

[HellboyOne]

Thanks for all the tips.

It's more of a curiosity than something that's bugging me. It's not like the arrow pulls away from me when I'm using it. It just...drifts off every so not-very-often when I'm not doing anything. I'm sure it's got something to do with the Frankenstein situation of this computer made of brand-spankin' new parts and "holy shit, do they still make those?" parts.