Windows 2000 Question - Bouncing Windows

Factual Questions
1

OK, so Microsoft has no answer to this. Neither does our internal support. Perhaps some of you may be able to help.

Periodically when working on a Win2000 machine connected to a organization’s network, all windows in all open applications begin to vertical scroll on their own.

What do I mean? While viewing this web page, move your mouse over to the vertical scrollball and move the window up and down rather fast. At the same time you jiggle the window, slowying move down to the bottom of the page until bottoming out.

For example, when attempting to view a web page (it doesn’t matter whether IE, Netscape or Opera) when the jitters start, the page will scroll by itself to the bottom and stay they. Any attempt to use the scrollbar and move back up to the top of the page results in scrolling back down again by itself. Often when finally at the bottom of the page it jumps a bit.

The application itself is stable; only the open window scrolls.

Ditto for Word, Excel, web tools, special applications, the lot. Even if I open a system box to choose among options, if that box has more options than visible that window scrolls as well. If there is no vertical scroll present, but a horizontal scroll, then that’s what scrolls.

How long does this happen? It begins abruptly and continues for 90 minutes to two-three hours before stopping.

When I use Task Manager and view CPU performance I observe CPU performance move from zero to two or three percent, up to 15%, 40%, 60%, 20% etc., before dropping back to almost zero. When checked with no applications open, CPU utilizations continues its spiking and subsiding.

The system is checked for viruses, trojans, etc. (none), spyware (none), hidden programs (none). All hardware components check out fine as well. Now we do use Tivoli to push updates across the network. Is it possible that the Tivoli push somehow is causing my machine to experience bouts of Parkinson’s with CPU spikes in utilization?

Any thoughts on how to cure this dilemma?

2

Do you have the Microsoft Office Shortcut Bar open on your system; and if it is, is it currently located at the top of your screen?

If not that, what type of machine and video card are you using?

3

I would guess something is triggering the wheel mouse input.

Flaky mouse/cable?

I have a problem where Win2000 decides that my GPS receiver is a serial mouse and installs it for me. Certain kinds of data will make the cursor fly around and right-click everywhere.

4

SkipMagic - MS Office toolbar is not running. I do not belive its installed. The system is a corporate IBM desktop M series with onboard video. We’ve detected no video card problems.

vd - It’s not the mouse. No indication this is a hardware issue. The problem is sporadic. It does not occur all the time nor at regular intervals.

5

Sounds like something’s causing spurious keystrokes… you tried opening Notepad and seeing if anything gets written in there? (Spacebar, for example - you don’t have large breasts, perhaps? :D)

On second thought, you said Word… which would seem to mean that it’s not a regular character. I vote with vd - if it isn’t a wireless mouse, then it could be the mouse driver. Have you tried changing/upgrading it?

6

Flakey hardware can most definitely be quite sporadic in its flakiness. It’s by far the leading candidate for your problem.

7

I have seen this behavior too, but I have no idea what’s causing it. At the least I’ve been able to get away with rebooting the machine, at the most I’ve had to resort to a OS repair. That seems to have made it go away. At least in Win2K that’s an easy thing to do.

8

Sometimes my windows go crazy like that too - it thinks the wheel button has been pressed on my wheel-mouse. If you have one too, try clicking the wheel button a couple of times (press down on the wheel and it will click) For me, that jolts it back to reality.

9

Also, some Laptops with a touchpad can Emulate the scrolling wheel on a mouse. So just because tou don’t have a mouse doesnt mean you can’t have a similar problem. I think for both cases especially the former (touchpad), you can turn it off in the control pannel (Mouse and pointing devices… or if your device has a more advanced control pannel “applet” you can check there as well. If this is the case, I suggest trying the advanced more specific applet first.