Windows updates trash mouse performance I have a desktop PC, a debranded HP that had XP Media Center edition before I owned it and which I got as a no OS PC. It now has Windows 7 Ultimate. It's run great for years. Then all of a sudden, the mouse was no longer working well. You could move the pointer across the screen and then suddenly the pointer would be stuck in one place. Then it would move for a bit and then be stuck. It did this with three different mice, all of which run fine on my laptop. All the mice run perfectly in safe mode on the desktop and on my laptop in any mode. It's only in regular mode on my desktop that I have this problem. Fortunately, I have an Acronis backup from two years ago on an external hard drive. I restored it and the mouse problem was immediately gone. All the mice worked perfectly. And, btw, this Acronis image was from a time when I had freshly installed Windows 7, the Loader, and some software. I then uninstalled the dated Kaspersky (dated because of the Acronis restore) and installed the current one. Still no problems. I installed LibreOffice 4 – no problems. The computer was all fixed up. I could go ahead with using it. Not so fast. I always have Windows 7 set to check with me first before installing updates. Since this restore was from two years ago, you can imagine that it needed a lot of updates. So I let them install, and as soon as it was done and the PC rebooted, it was back to the same mouse problems as before. The problems are so bad the computer is rendered unusable. I had created a system restore point immediately before the updates. Smart me, huh? So I restored to that point and Windows claimed that the restore was successful. However, I STILL had problems with the mouse getting stuck. I booted into safe mode, and it claimed the system restore didn't actually work. Like before, the mouse worked fine in safe. WTF? I'm ready to throw this computer off a cliff. Any idea why the updates (there were 94 of them) monkey wrenched any mouse from working right? I don't use the desktop for much. I have my MagicJack phone service on it (which, btw, I shut off and still had mouse problems) and I run LibreOffice. Pretty much everything else I do on my laptop. Right now I'm running the Windows memory diagnostics tool (part of the “repair your computer” option at bootup) just in case I have some bad memory. I'd doubt it. If it were a hardware problem, it should have affected it after the Acronis restore and during safe mode. I guess I could restore via Acronis to two years ago again and not let it do a Windows update. But then is the PC unsafe? I don't surf the web much with it, and even when I do it's on a limited (not an administrator) account. I keep Kaspersky PURE on it. I could do the Acronis restore again and then let the updates install one by one in an attempt to determine which one is the culprit, but I've learned I can't trust the Windows System Restore to roll back. Uhg, this f**king thing. Anyone got some ideas I haven't thought of yet?
Was one of the "updates" you installed actually a mouse driver? I see mouse and keyboard drivers all the time in Windows Update, but unless I have a specific problem an updated driver solves, I don't install them. Safe Mode runs with a reduced driver set, so if your mouse works in Safe Mode only, that's a clue you have a driver problem. Try rolling back your mouse drivers if you can. You may can run your mouse with the default Windows driver. If you mouse is a USB type, uninstall the device, reboot and let Windows reinstall it.
Thanks, PhaseDoubt. That was a plausible hypothesis. Unfortunately, it didn't pan out. I uninstalled the driver in the Device Manager, but to no avail. At first I thought it worked. Windows loaded up in regular mode and the mouse was working, but after a little bit it started getting stuck again. I suspect it may be loading some kind of software that is conflicting with the OS. This Acronis restore is a pretty fresh install of Windows from a few years ago with a little software installed. I'm wondering if it has undetectable malware. I'm thinking of just installing from scratch. Edit: An update -- it appears to be working fine now. I'm crossing my fingers that this keeps up. I uninstalled a very old program named HP Organize. I had to run it in Windows 98 compatible mode even to get it to run. I also uninstalled some dumb thing named Cinema Now that I wasn't using and Roxio 2010, which I never use. At least for now this thing is running. I haven't allowed Windows to do any updates for fear of it getting stuck again. However, now I've created a restore point and also have created a full Acronis image, so I should be able to try letting it do updates and see what happens. Wish me luck.