Compaq Optical Scroll Mouse. Windows ME. Lately, the curser has been freezing up. It will get stuck in one position, and it will actually move around, but the visible curser stays stuck and then reappears in the “moved” position. Frustrating. It took me a few minutes to get into the “Title” box on this new thread.
Now, in typing this, the letters I type do not appear right away, but only after a delay of a few seconds. That has happened in the past, but only very temporarily. Now, it is happening all the time I’ve been typing. I wonder if these symptoms are connected? Just now, I went back to change “visual” to "visible"and “courser” to “curser” by using the arrows, instead of the curser. When I first boot up, the problem doesn’t exist, but it’s just a matter of minutes before it arises.
CWS mutates so rapidly, Spybot and Adaware usually don’t catch up for a week to 10 days. The guy that writes CWShredder is on a mission to battle CWS, so it is updated more often, and is focused on one threat. It may not work for you, but it couldn’t hurt.
If the text entry is jamming as well it’s unlikely to a mouse hardware issue.
The symptoms you mention are usually caused something grabbing system resources or the PC having to work harder than normal. The reasons for this can include spyware infestations, system running low on hard disk space, hard drive with media surface errors, viruses, or some legitimate background process you have installed like a word processor doing a timed backup. It might even be an overheating CPU if the onboard CPU fan has died, but this usually generates system errors not just a slowdown.
You might also try using the “system configuration” applet to check the stuff tagging along for the ride at startup and deactivate anything not mission critical.
What is the free system resources percent indicated in the control panel system applet?
Around the office, the leading cause is memory leak, solved by restarting (whether or not that is the ideal thing is another issue)
Alot of home PC users do have hijacked computers with programs that switch settings, like the homepage of your browser (usually IE). They often cause the mouse delay you describe.
Right now it is 36%. I’ve checked that lately, and it has been running low: 30-50%. I checked it a few days ago because it appears that my memory has been running low prematurely. I have 256 mg RAM, but in the last few days I had to reboot after only about two hours. I’ll check the system config, but my start-up menu doesn’t have anything new on it.
There were only two startup items I could remove: SSDPSRV and TkBellExe. I did have two error messages in the last week, on startup, having to do with an inoperable .dll, but I can’t remember which ones. The puter was working good last night, but the troubles started again this afternoon, indicating it is a heat problem, I guess. My manual doesn’t mention anything about fans. I do hear at least one fan running, but I guess I have more than one. Is this something I can handle myself, with my limited knowledge and experience?
That’s a very low amount of available resources under ME for system with 256 megs RAM and assuming you didn’t have a bunch of big apps running at the time you polled the system resources number. You should normally be in the 70 to 80 percent range of free system resources after boot, and without any apps running. Have you installed any new hardware or software in the past few weeks? Updated any drivers or apps?
Re the fans take the case off the machine. There should normally be two fans running. The fan for the power supply (the box that the power wires come out of) and the small fan that is attached to the CPU chip. Some systems have extra case fans to move air around, but they should be easy to see.
I checked the system resources after booting up just now, and already it was down to 60%. In the past it was at least 80%. I did download RealOne Player recently, since I needed it to hear some bird songs, but that shouldn’t have caused any problems.
This morning I got an air duster and dusted off everything in the puter. I can see the two fans with the cover on, and they’re both running. I don’t know what’s eating up my resources.
RealOne has a rep as a fairly substantial resource hog and it (without permission) usually also installs a resident applet that loads at bootup and stays resident even if Real player isn’t being used. but it normally wouldn’t crush your system reosusces the way you seem to be experiencing, but some people have had problems with it.
The RealPlayer start-up applet is TkBellExe which I removed from my startup config. I also removed it by starting RealPlayer>Tools>Auto Services and unchecking all options. I just deleted all temp entries in my IE Internet Options and all cookies (meaning now I have to re-log in again). Restarted and my resources was 64%. Not much of an improvement.
Which is about what I expected. If your available sys resources are only 65% with 256 megs of RAM available under ME, and this problem never happened previously, it sounds like something is being loaded at boot that is gobbling up your resources and is continuing to erode them once installed. What’s your CPU speed out of curiosity?
Horsepower is definitely not your issue. You could actually run XP reasonably well with those CPU and RAM specs, and it’s much better OS.
Anyway the system information applet in ME has a tab called startup where you can play around with activating and deactivating various applets that want to tag along for startup.
Given that the system resources are reporting quite low at bootup, and assuming that you’re not running out of hard drive space it sounds like a software, not a hardware issue. If the CPU was overheating or the RAM was defective, these would typcially cause fatal errors and lockups, not mere slowdowns.
Unless you can find some hidden new hitchiker app hiding in the background , you’ve got me stumped… unless… do you have a virus checker onboard? Try removing or deactivating it temporarily and see what happpens system response wise. Don’t install any downloaded software or open any email attachments when in this non-protected mode, but net surfing and using main apps should be fine…
The startup in System Information is the same as in msconfig. I’ve deleted all that I could. I have over 10 gb free on the hard drive. I’m not going to mess with the Norton stuff, including the virus checker. That’s been active for a long time without any prior problem.