Microsoft mouse has mind of it's own
 

My mouse has a mind of its own. Sometimes I have to fight it to make it go where I want. I have a concern it is someone controlling my GUI or it is set-up wrong. But why is it that I will go to move my mouse sometimes and it will be near the menu bar and want to be near it when I am trying to do something. And this is an optical mouse......so it should be smooth control. It is a USB/PS2 Basic optical mouse. I have it set up as Generic (PS2) Wheel Mouse. Is this the right selection. Should I be concerned with someone having remote control acccess to my GUI?

you know i had the same problem i was using a mouse pad whith a picture in it i took the mouse pad out and it worked fine might be of some help

Re: Microsoft mouse has mind of it's own
 

That would be highly unlikely. Sounds as if the light the mouse uses is bouncing funny. That's probably what the case was with the picture merlin had. Try finding a mouse pad that is one solid color (or flip the mousepad upside down:D). That might work better.

Optical mice have one major drawback - they need a proper reflective surface to work right. Most tables will suffice, but make sure the table is clean and there are no large bits of dirt or fluff on it. My only experiences with optical mice have taught me that grit will reflect the light the wrong way.

Was it Sun that used to have those optical mice with the special mousepads? They would ONLY work on the supplied mousepad, but they would ALWAYS work.
___
shack

I just cleaned the mouse pad with some water and beating it against the desk. Should work. My moouse pad is a solid blue so it should be no problem there. The mouse is set up as a generic USB wheel mouse. Is there a better driver I can get for it? I wouldnt find it a surprise that it is hard to get a driver for a microsoft mouse on liinux though. Maybe a third party driver is available though. Has anyone seen one of these around?

"Was it Sun that used to have those optical mice with the special mousepads? They would ONLY work on the supplied mousepad, but they would ALWAYS work?"

Yeah, Sun, and Xerox--for a while.

They worked until the grid wore off....in about 6 months of normal, daily use.

After beating the mouse pad I still have the same thing where the mouse moves around. Normally somewhere near the edge of the screen. The mouse pad is blue and has no picture.

On my desktop, my video card does wierd things with the cursor. It seems as thought the vesa video mode is not set up properly, and the cursor jumps back about 3cm when it hits the top of the screen. I doubt that this is the problem in this case; I just thought it a matter of interest.

The problem might be that the light in the mouse is not bright enough, or you might be hitting the edge of the mouse mat. Try it with a plain white surface, if you can, and see if you have the same problem.

> "I wouldnt find it a surprise that it is hard to get a driver for a microsoft mouse on liinux"
There are a variety of Micro$oft mouse drivers on linux - check the mouse man pages for information on most of them. The drivers that gpm use for Micro$oft mice are: imps2, ms3, fuimps2, ms/ms+, bare, pnp and exps2, none of which were created by Micro$oft.

You might wonder why Linux has support for specifically Micro$oft mice. It's really very simple - Linux is designed to work with as much as possible, in order to serve as many people as possible. Especially as a lot of new computers come with OEM Micro$oft mice. Why should you have to buy a different mouse when the other one works perfectly (even if it is horribly uncomfortable)?
___
shack

I had this problem with RH9 (which is the distro next to your name) when I switched mouses. Is that what you did or is this a fresh install? If you swapped then you need to reconfigure your mouse (hell, it's worth trying anyways). You can do it in the terminal by hitting the ctrl-alt-F1 sequence. Once you log in you can type redhat-configure-<hit tab key> Sorry I forgot the command and I don't use RH any more. If you hit tab the pc will beep hit tab one more time and it will show you the commands that you could be trying to type. Choose the appropriate one and go through the wizard. to get back to the GUI hit ctrl-alt-F6 (or F7.... try several if it doesn't go back immediately)

One note, you don't have to do it in terminal but when it happened to me I could move my mouse to open up a terminal in the userspace.

I have done a fresh install from RH8 to RH9. I have the same mouse from both times. I purchases a Microsoft mouse because contrary to me not likeing Microsoft....they still make a good mouse. The mouse has had the same problem in both distros. Also when the mouse is in grapghical mode it is totally screwy. When you move the mouse it will move the command line to another prompt as if I were hitting the [enter] key. The screen also acts funny. What is the driver I can download for my mouse? I have a Microsoft Basic Optical Mouse....and it has a wheel.

Did you try going to a terminal screen (Ctrl-Alt-F1)? There are Microsoft drivers. Try the intellimouse ones or something else in the Microsoft mouse menu. You may have to restart x with a Ctrl-Alt-Bkspace once you go back into it. My Microsoft optical wheelmouse works just fine w/ FC1 and it did w/ RH9. I think it may be an IntelliMouse though.

I loaded the graphical form of the mouse configuration by typing redhat-config-mouse. I chose an intellimouse driver and it went crazy at first. It opened a bunch of programs and I had to restart the computer. Then the mouse seemed to work alriight. I still incurr the mouse reflecting towards the corner of a sceen though.

I've encountered this in earlier versions of Redhat, and the culprit turned out to be Redhat's "Kudzu" hardware detection utility. By default, kudzu runs every time you boot up; it's function being to look for and configure new hardware in your system.

In my case, the problem was that kudzu would intermittently mis-identify my mouse, and would therefore write incorrect pointer entries into my XF86Config-4 file. The results were exactly as you describe: the pointer wanted to stay "glued" to the bottom corner of the screen near the menu bar, and when I tried to move it anywhere else it would skip and jump erratically around the desktop, randomly clicking icons, popping up menus, opening apps, etc.

My solution was to open XF86Config-4 and enter the correct values for the "Device" and "Protocol" options under the "Core Pointer" section, and then disable kudzu via Redhat's "Service Configuration" utility. Disabling kudzu only prevents it from automatically running at bootup; if you do add a new piece of hardware and want it auto-configured, you can still run kudzu manually whenever you need.

The mouse has only opened applications like crazy when I changed the settings on it. Now the mouse is only acting funny once in a while and seems like it is stuck near the edge of the screen and I have to fight with it a bit until it works. The malfunction usually is for a short period of time until the mouse seems to work properly again.