Bizarre mouse behaviour!!!

[Fanum]

My old MS Optical mouse gave up its ghost a few weeks back after getting a little erratic...it was the best rodent I've ever fondled so I looked for another MS one to replace it and happened across a half price sale of a wireless laser mouse with wireless fancy doodah keyboard....it's OK (in fact I really like the mouse and the KB has some nice programmable bits on it) apart from it does get a bit tetchy when the batteries get low and it's taken some time to get the KB set up to work smoothly with repeat rates etc.

Tonight though, the mouse suddenly stopped responding and because previously when the batteries were getting low it'd just become slow to respond, I did't immediately think it was them causing it.

I used the KB to reboot but when the system powered up again the bizarreness started.......

First I got the messages up that you get when you use MSCONFIG to disable start up progs...I last used that a fortnight ago to trim some stuff outbut it was all fine earlier today

After a couple more reboots enabling and disabling things (and with mouse either working fully or not at all), and various things dropping out (messages saying Skype didn't have a device for input, Internet con down, losing all my desktop themes (wtf!!) having no sound and my TV card failing to initialise, I finally got a message saying the mouse batteries were critically low.

I took them out but found that they were really hot.....almost too hot to hold!!

They're 2300mAh rechargeables so I replaced them with new Duracells, rebooted again and suddenly everything's working properly again

Very very odd......I'd done nothing, not changed any settings and not installed anything over the last few days...I didn't even have anything going on with Bittorrent today so I can only asume that all the oddness was down to the mouse.

Why the feck it would have that effect though is beyond me......


Might be worth bearing in mind if you use a wirelss KB/Mouse combo and things start getting screwy with your system.

Just as a matter of interest, anyone come across this before or any ideas on how it could happen??

 

[Wizard]

Apart from the hot batteries, this sort of daftness often happens when a mobile is too close to the receiver.

 

[Fanum]

Apart from the hot batteries, this sort of daftness often happens when a mobile is too close to the receiver.

Hmm....it is...the reciever was only 6 inches away from the mouse.

Why would it casue all that system damage/glitches though???

 

[Wizard]

Mobile phone matey, not the mouse.

Baically the USB cable allows RF to get right into the internals of the PC, which the PC doesn't like at all.

Not necessarily the problem here, but I had one engineer with an old-ish laptop who couldn't use the printer at a particular site...... because of where the mobile phone charger was on the desk. Every time he plugged the printer in, the PC went bonkers.

 

[Fanum]

ooo........ahhhhh.........

There are two mobiles within two feet of the mouse and reciever, a GPRS PDA and a wireless linked PDA as well.......

I'm trying to make meself sterile with all the RF radiation

Oh and a bluetooth adaptor and a wireless G router

*fizz*

 

[Wizard]

I'm trying to make meself sterile with all the RF radiation

I thought age would have taken care of that already

Try moving the RF kit for a day or two and see what happens. If that is the issue, and the receiver has a cable, get a clip-on ferrite from Maplin or similar. If that doesn't work, and assuming they're all in holders, try moving the phones onto a shelf a few inches above the receiver.

 

[ianf]

Could also have been streaming mouse interrupts or hanging plug and play on boot up causing everything else waiting on a device to be hosed. If it was iffy on power it might have been removed & presented so fast PnP can't cope.

No real idea about the hot batteries, but it may indicate it was transmitting flat out too.

 

[Deleted account 220427002]

Bill is it one of the Logitech ones is it?

If it is there are problems runing them with Firefox

Put me off buying one of these

 

[Butler]

Have you changed the mouse mat recently?
Sometimes those shiny ones make mousey do that.

 

[shugie]

I wonder if the charging circuit for the batteries was drawing so much current that it was upsetting the motherboard - hence TV card failing to start up and batteries getting so hot.