[SATLUG] Annoying mouse problem

[Bruce Dubbs]

Jeremy Mann wrote:
> Happy Thankgiving everybody! I have a really annoying mouse problem on my
> Inspiron 4100 laptop. Every 3 or 4 minutes the mouse goes haywire and
> shoots
> all over the screen then returns to normal. In the past plugging in an
> external mouse (PS2 or USB) would cure the problem. However now its
> affecting the external mouse as well.
> 
> Is this a hardware problem or driver issue?

It sounds like a hardware problem.  In your X configuration file,
probably /etc/X11/xorg.conf, you should have something like:

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier  "Mouse0"
    Driver      "mouse"
    Option      "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
    Option      "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
EndSection

This "mice" device gangs all the various mouse inputs together.

Look at /dev/input/ and try the devices such as mouse0 individually,
restarting X between tries to try to isolate the bad (or good) mouse input.

  -- Bruce