mouse hangs,hesitates WHY

prospector · Post by **prospector** » Tue Sep 10, 2002 5:16 pm

I have been having problems with my mouse. I have a P4 1.6 g, I have only had the computer for a month and an having a problem moving the mouse. It hesitates when I try to move it. I am wondering if it is the XP system? I have 80 % free space on hard drive, just defraged. It is a microsoft ps2 wheel mouse. 128m of RAM. No conflicts. Any Ideas?Please

dadx2mj · Post by **dadx2mj** » Tue Sep 10, 2002 5:21 pm

I would check for some background app hogging up resources and also check to make sure you have an up to date driver for the mouse installed. Probably not your problem but, XP with only 128 megs of ram is almost a crime. In my opinion 256 is a minimum and 384-512 megs is much better.

BTW welcome to PCA hope to see you around more we are a friendly bunch and rarely bite so feel free to make yourself at home.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Tue Sep 10, 2002 7:54 pm

I concur on the memory. The BARE MINIMUM for XP should be 256Mb in my opinion. XP will use just about the whole 128Mb you have installed just to run by itself - you're probably using the swap file continously.

You'll notice a BIG performance difference if you add at least another 128Mb stick. Add more if you can, memory is cheap, and XP will only work better. I'd say 512Mb is the cost-effective sweet-spot now if you're a power user or serious gamer.

Don't believe me? Bring up the task manager (CTRL-ALT-DEL -> Task Manager) and click on the Performance tab. If your Total Commit Memory is over 128000 K, WinXP is using ALL your RAM just to run the OS with nothing left over for apps, and your apps are running off the swap file on the hard drive!

It may have worked okay when your XP install was new and clean with little running in the background (XP after a clean install uses around 100Mb) but I bet you're over the 128Mb mark now.

If you still have problems after the extra ram, and this problem just started happening think real long and hard about what you may have installed around the time it started.

Run MSCONFIG.EXE and see what's running in the STARTUP tab. Uncheck anything you don't need (MS Office backgound apps, registration apps, etc). You don't need background apps for Winamp, Real Player yada yada....

Have you updated any drivers? I've seen bad drivers for a modem, video or sound card affect the mouse.

Is this a USB mouse? If so, try unplugging anything else using USB bus. I've seen some USB hardware interfere with mice.

Run Adaware and see if there's any Spyware running in the background. Somethimes that crap can wreak havoc like that.

Hope this helps....

Jim Z · Post by **Jim Z** » Tue Sep 10, 2002 10:46 pm

s this a USB mouse?

PS/2.

prospector, one thing to do when the mouse acts like this is open Task Manager (hit Ctrl-Alt-Del once), then select the Performance tab. When the mouse hitches or hangs, watch the CPU graph and see if it spikes up really high (close to 100%). If it does, change over to the Processes tab and look at the column labeled "CPU", and see if any process is showing a high number in the CPU column around the time when the mouse is flaking out.

I concur on the memory. The BARE MINIMUM for XP should be 256Mb in my opinion. XP will use just about the whole 128Mb you have installed just to run by itself - you're probably using the swap file continously.

you want pain? One of the lab PCs I have at work was running Win2k on 64 MB of RAM. On a clean boot, the memory load was 68 MB. I wonder why it seemed to be so much faster when they finally put 192 MB in it

succubiss · Post by **succubiss** » Wed Sep 11, 2002 1:07 pm

I had a bad video card do this to me.

Go to Display Properties -> 'Settings' Tab -> Advanced -> Troubleshooting.

There you see a Hardware Acceleration Bar. Moving it one notch to the left will disable cursor and bitmap acceleration. Hit Apply, and see if it does the trick for you.

If this is it, you might want to inspect your card or see if new drivers will do the trick for you.

best
--sam

Busby · Post by **Busby** » Wed Sep 11, 2002 1:38 pm

Win2k Server on a P166 w/ 32MB of RAM is a pain

I would have to say add some more memory, a 256MB stick would be good. IF still having problems try what succubiss said and also take a look at your processes and memory usage to see if there are any CPU hogs.

two slow · Post by **two slow** » Thu Sep 12, 2002 4:59 am

I had a mouse cord go bad and it acted like that. If you have another one lying around you could try swapping them. But most likely it is the ram or lack of ram.

prospector · Post by **prospector** » Fri Sep 13, 2002 8:19 pm

I am getting an additional 256m of ram to start. I have been trying to monitor the cpu usage, does not seem to be any real bug hogs, but the total physical memory is 130352K. available is 16436K. will see what happens when i install the new memory. thanks All

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mouse hangs,hesitates WHY

mouse hangs,hesitates WHY

thanks for the help.