About two hours ago, my computer here at the office just started acting weird. The mouse cursor wouldn’t move from a very specific point on the left side of my screen. If I moved the mouse, the cursor would move very briefly, then pop back to that spot.
My first assumption was that the mouse had gone bad. No problem- I went to our office manager and told her I needed a new one. Luckily we had on in stock, so I put that one on and rebooted.
The mouse worked fine until I actually logged on.
Grr.
My second thought was “some sorta virus?”
I checked. Nothing running what shouldn’t have been.
At this point, I’m getting pissed and desperate. We’re in the middle of crunch right now, and I NEED my mouse to do my work.
So we call up the tech guy here at the office. Of course, he’s gone home for a couple of days, so I feel really bad about interrupting his hard-earned days off.
The symptoms are described to him, and he says, “You’ve got a Wacom tablet, don’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Move the pen away from it.”
I did, and suddenly the mouse started working just fine. It turns out that the pen in its holder had gotten bumped, and the eraser ended up resting against the tablet. It kept trying to “erase” that particular section of my screen.
sigh