'Staggering' Cursor...

[Pilot Pete]

Ok boffins, need your help. Be gentle with me as I am literate, but no expert!

My cursor seems to break into a staggering motion evry now and again; as if the system is really clogged. Also, it takes a while to jump from one open window to another; again as if the system is really busy. This is happening regularly, but with no pattern. For instance, right now everything seems to be back at normal speed.

I have plenty of space available, run McAfee for virus protection, ZoneAlarm for firewall and recently installed Spyware Doctor. I regularly clear temporary internet files etc so feel I am doing the basics to prevent too much clutter.

Anyone have any ideas as to what might be causing the problems I am experiencing, or perhaps a tool that I could run that may help you guys to diagnose something?

Thanks in advance.

PP

[CBA_caption]

Now, I don't want this to sound arrogant, but is it a mouse with a roller underneath. You're showing classic signs of dirty conctacts. Take the large ball out and look inside for small rollers. There should be 2 ad 90 degrees to each other.

Another thought is a wireless mouse with a battery on the way out.

thirdly have you go more than one pointing device connected? These may be conflicting.

Hope thats not egg and possibly of some use,

CBA

[Pilot Pete]

CBA-C

No arrogance felt, as I said, my knowledge is Basic (with a capital B!)

Only one device, traditional mouse connected via a wire. Contacts clean.

Thanks, any other ideas?

PP

[Conan the Librarian]

Not running iTunes are we?


Conan

[Pilot Pete]

No Conan.

PP

[Devlin Carnet]

I think I would be tempted just to try another mouse before I went dabbling, just to prove that it isnt the mechanics of the mouse.

[shlittlenellie]

Do you regularly defrag the hard drive? That usuallly helps quite a bit in the sluggish stakes. (If this is your company laptop then don't try this since our very own CT killed his by defragging from the personal partition).

What operating system are you running and have you checked the task manager to see what's running when it's supposedly at idle?

:ok:

[Pilot Pete]

Thanks for the replies so far guys. It's not the company laptop; I would rather let Bangalore screw the settings up on that!!! It's my home PC, running Windows 98 and we defrag every month or two, last one done just over a month back.

When you say check the Task Manager, is that just doing an ALT,CTRL, DEL and seeing what is active in the Close Program dialog window?

I am certain it is not the mouse itself as we have an old one which we swapped to test. No difference. Again, at this precise moment everything seems normal, but when the problem happens the pointer seems to lag significantly and it is slow to open new windows etc, including web pages (we are on broadband), which still leaves me feeling it is the system that is causing the bottleneck somewhere.

PP

[slim_slag]

I find AcroRd32.exe or javaw32.exe will cause problems like this. Open a pdf in your browser and AcroRd just hangs around, sometimes hogging the system. My evidence is that when I end the process the problems go away. Newest downloads don't fix it. A reboot always does.

[TightSlot]

Out of interest, how much memory do you have?

[Pilot Pete]

248Mb of RAM, system resources 26% free....

Would it help if I did an ALT,CTRL, DEL and post what is running when I get the problem? I am sure I have seen the AcroRd32.exe running before as I do read lots of company manuals (obviously on cold, wet dreary days off with nothing better to do;) ) which are Acrobat files...

Can I run something that will show me what is using the system resources at any particular moment?

Thanks again.

PP

ps I have the problem at the moment as I type and I have noticed that the letters I type are lagging a little behind my keyboard strokes, which again makes me think it is a resource probelm rather than mouse...

[Conan the Librarian]

Pete, if you go and get the Microsoft Anti spyware suite, (Free!) it also has added goodies such as the facility to look at running processes, etc. and tell you exacty what they are and which programs they are affiliated with. You can then close these processes down one by one until you have the culprit isolated.

It can also give you a faster running machine too.

Conan

[shlittlenellie]

Pete,

After replying above, I then experienced exactly what you were seeing. I also have a win98 machine that ran sweetly and then suddenly started locking up for a split-second every 1-15 seconds. I have always done all the right things: ran all the anti-spyware programs, regularly defragged the hard drive and still I wondered what the problem was. Incidentally, the Microsoft anti-spyware-suite doesn't run on win98.

I've sorted my machine by the following:

Diagnosis:

1) Start: Run - type msconfig and select the startup tab - that will show you exactly what's running on startup and potentially stealing your resources (ctrl-alt-del will not tell you much about what's running in win98).

2) There's a free process viewer that does much what the task manager tells you in win 2k. It can be found at www.prcview.com and it's a small and elegant piece of software.

What was hanging my machine:

a) Multiple instances of 'realplayer'
&
b) Microsoft's kb891711.exe (installed on an auto-update and had caused stuttering performance before)

msconfig will allow to uncheck the boxes of the various processes that you don't want to run at startup. Running prcview will then confirm that they are not running when you reboot.

You may also find that your system clock runs slowly when the machine is left on whilst you still have the stuttering problem; this has nothing to do with the clock battery being flat and is simply due to the fact that the processor load is increasing to 100% every 20 seconds or so with either a) and/or b) above.

If this doesn't solve it or doesn't make sense then PM me.

[Tarq57]

I've found similar problems and slow running on both win98 and xp which have reduced significantly after uninstalling adobe acrobat, winzip, and real player. My personal opinion is that they are all (somewhat) malware-laden, resource-hogging, cumbersome to use bloatware. A good, very lghtweight alternative to adobe acrobat is called foxit reader, it can be got here; http://www.foxitsoftware.com/it's a stand-alone utility, just download to the desktop. http://www.extractnow.com/ is for a winzip replacement-this one comes with an installer.I'm using real/quicktime alternative from file forum, its about an 8 mb download, though.Have you tried looking in the mouse settings under properties to see if it has a problem, updating or reinstalling the driver, or is that getting a bit freaky? Under mouse settings you could try lowering the speed a bit..not sure if that will help or not.
And of course in the stickys for this forum there are brilliant lists of software that may assist. The ones I've listed are true freeware,no ads etc.