Hello,

I have a really strange situation going on here with my mouse. I have an IBM Thinkpad, 600E, with that little red mouse in the middle of the keyboard, I believe it is called a 'Track-point'. However, it was working fine up until yesterday. I am already aware of the problem that most Thinkpad mice have, where the mouse drags for a few seconds in the opposite direction, but then stops, due to the track-point getting stuck in the same spot for a while. That happens on my laptop all the time, but it's not a problem. But this is the problem that has been plaguing me since yesterday. All of a sudden, the mouse shot up to the far right of the screen, where I couldn't see it. It became stuck there, and when I try to move it, it just shoots back. When I tried moving it back, it shot to the far left of the screen and didn't respond. Whenever I move it right, it goes left, and vice versa. And when I leave it alone for a while, it slows down. But then it restarts- shooting erratically to all corners of the screen, all over the place, all by itself. Which makes it impossible to do anything. Are there any things that could fix this problem, or should it be solved if I just leave it alone? Or maybe should I take apart the laptop and clean the mouse, or as I've seen, tighten it back up? At this point, I'm not competent enough to try and reinstall a mouse or hardware.

Thank you greatly, any help at all is appreciated!

I have a similar "trackpoint" on my Compaq Armada M700, and I had same kind of problem with making it work (today). It seems to me that you have wrong protocol chosen in XF86Config-4. At first I had used /dev/gpmdata device, which did not work in X. Then, as I switched to /dev/psaux (ps2-mouse device) I got erratic movements. Here, however, is my mouse configuration from my XF86Config-4:

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Configured Mouse"
Driver "mouse"
Option "CorePointer"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "Protocol" "PS/2"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
EndSection

This setting allow me to use both the trackpoint AND external PS2-mouse. I had protocol "ImPS/2" chosen when the pointer moved strangely. I also had a line

Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"

below other options, which could also be source of the problem.

I, too, have had this problem. It seems to be related to the polling of ACPI information about the battery, fan, temperature, etc... I unloaded the battery, ac, fan and thermal modules to fix it.