For the past few days, I've been having a peculiar problem with X Windows and my mouse. After awhile, the mouse will cease to function, or start acting "wiggy*" for no reason.

* - Wiggy as in, the mouse will constantly go to the lower-left corner and any attempt to move it will bring it back to original position, and act as if it was pressing all the buttons, and moving the wheelmouse---even though I'm not.

My first solution, since I was interesting in upgrading my SuSE 8.2 anyway, and it wasn't a mission-critical install, I decided to ditch it to try Fedora Core 1.( I wanted an upgrade, and I didn't want to pay for SuSE 9.0) This didn't even fix that either.

To make sure it wasn't my mouse acting flaky, I boot my Windoze (Gaming) partition and it appears to be fully functional, so it isn't my mouse, physically.

System Setup:
Distro before: SuSE 8.2 Pro (Using KDE 3.1.4)
Distro now: Fedora Core 1 (Using GNOME 2.4)
Mouse: Logitech Optical Wheelmouse USB (using PS/2 port via plug device) model #M-BD58
XFree86 4.3 on both distros I believe
NVidia GeForce FX 5200 128MB VRAM

Also: When I reboot Fedora, it gives me this error:
Console Mouse Services [FAILED]

I'm not a complete n00b when it comes to Linux( but no elite user ), and I fear no command-line. Any help or direction will be greatly appreciated.. If you need any more info from me, let me know too.

Could you post the pointer section of your /etc/X11/XF86Config(-4) file?

Could you post the pointer section of your /etc/X11/XF86Config(-4) file? Also, the output of /sbin/lsmod

# Mouse pointer section of XF86Config

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"

# If the normal CorePointer mouse is not a USB mouse then
# this input device can be used in AlwaysCore mode to let you
# also use USB mice at the same time.
Identifier "DevInputMice"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
EndSection

---------------

# Output of /sbin/lsmod

Module Size Used by Tainted: P
nls_iso8859-1 3516 1 (autoclean)
udf 98496 0 (autoclean)
emu10k1 69256 2 (autoclean)
ac97_codec 17192 0 (autoclean) [emu10k1]
sound 74292 0 (autoclean) [emu10k1]
soundcore 6468 7 (autoclean) [emu10k1 sound]
parport_pc 19076 1 (autoclean)
lp 9060 0 (autoclean)
parport 37056 1 (autoclean) [parport_pc lp]
autofs 13364 0 (autoclean) (unused)
e1000 71616 1
floppy 58012 0 (autoclean)
sg 36492 0 (autoclean)
sr_mod 18168 2 (autoclean)
microcode 4700 0 (autoclean)
ide-scsi 12208 1
scsi_mod 108168 3 [sg sr_mod ide-scsi]
ide-cd 35776 0
cdrom 33728 0 [sr_mod ide-cd]
keybdev 2976 0 (unused)
hid 24708 0 (unused)
ehci-hcd 20264 0 (unused)
usb-uhci 26380 0 (unused)
usbcore 79168 1 [hid ehci-hcd usb-uhci]
mousedev 5556 1 (autoclean)
input 5888 0 (autoclean) [keybdev hid mousedev]
agpgart 54820 3 (autoclean)
nvidia 1764928 11 (autoclean)
ext3 71300 1
jbd 52084 1 [ext3]

---------------------

I had noticed that I had 2 mouse entries in my XF86Config file. Does removing one help, (The unused optional USB mouse option) ?

Also, If I switch to a console and go back to graphical, my mouse will work again, temporarily. I have also disabled gpm from boot.

I have to ask: what is lsmod actually?

Yeah I'd get rid of the unused (USB) mouse option. Make sure to get rid of the "DevInputMice" line from the screens section. I take it you have a 3 button wheelmouse. If getting rid of the USB part doesn't help then change the protocol to just "PS/2". This will disable the wheel. See if that helps anything.

lsmod lists the modules currently loaded into the kernel. These are kind of like drivers. Some of then actually are drivers and others aren't. They're basically bits of the kernel that you can add/remove during runtime.

OK, I'm going to try your suggestion, and see what happens, and yes its a 3-button wheelmouse; a cheapy Logitech from wal-mart. Haven't ever had a problem with it tho.