Member Avatar for buddyb

I'm encountering a peculiar situation on a Win2000Pro machine. When the machine cranks up in the AM it is fine and works normally. As the day wears on, with use, the mouse actions get jerkier. Anyone have an idea?
Thanks,
BuddyB

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Dani AI

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Given the pattern you described — mouse is fine after a cold boot but becomes progressively jerkier during the day — focus the troubleshooting on three areas: hardware (mouse, cable, batteries, sensor), system load/thermal (CPU or disk activity and heat buildup), and driver or input-device conflicts. That matches hints already raised by (cooling) and (PC busy with background activity) and the laptop/touchpad angle from . Below is a short, practical triage you can run now.

  • Quick isolation (hardware vs software): try the same mouse on another PC and try a different mouse on this PC. If the jerky behavior follows the mouse, replace it. For wireless mice, swap batteries. For optical mice, check/clean the sensor area and the surface you use.
  • Watch resource usage: open Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del) and sort by CPU and Disk when the jerk starts. Look for AV scans, scheduled backups, or svchost spikes that coincide with the lag.
  • Thermal check: note whether the case or keyboard gets noticeably warm when the problem appears. If so, fans ramping or CPU throttling can cause UI stutter. A simple test is a cold boot vs. several hours of use — if only the latter shows the issue, heat is likely.
  • Drivers and conflicts: disable extra pointing devices (touchpad, IBM stick) in Device Manager or BIOS temporarily. Boot to Safe Mode or perform a clean boot; if the problem disappears, a driver or startup program is responsible.
  • Legacy/port checks: on older machines check PS/2 vs USB behavior and look for resource/IRQ conflicts; try different USB ports (rear vs front) and avoid hubs while testing.

If heat or high CPU/disk activity is the root cause, cleaning dust, improving airflow, rescheduling heavy background tasks, or addressing runaway processes will fix it. If the problem is hardware, replacing the mouse is often the simplest fix. Use the triage above: if issue follows the mouse it is hardware; if it vanishes in Safe Mode it is software; if it appears only after the system warms up it is thermal.

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Member Avatar for nanosani

Is your cpu properly cooled ??

Member Avatar for buddyb

Is your cpu properly cooled ??

I really don't know; will have to check that out. Are there any other symptons that might reflect this as well?
Thanks, BuddyB

Member Avatar for DarphBobo

Is it a laptop? I see problems with optical mice on laptops, you sometimes have to turn off the touchpad/ibm stik by changing mouse type to serial in BIOS.

Darph

Member Avatar for HeddaLora

The title of your post made me think that maybe your mouse needs more coffee during the day... Sorry :mrgreen:

Member Avatar for Chery

I found after going back to 98se with a smaller hard drive, the mouse was more jerky and slower responding. It seemed to be when pc busyas in updates happening while I was trying to work. Old days was clean the mouse. Dont know if this is of help.

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