Cursor slow / unresponsive

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Using Win 10 with a workstation ca. 1 year old.

The cursor displayed by my trackball is very sluggish, sticky on-screen and frustrating to use. Switching to older mouse at first improves performance, but it too then degrades to abysmal performance. Device manager says it is working normally. Driver app says latest driver is installed.

Any suggestions?

-Peter

 

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powersaving issue? check settings for the device within device manager switch off powersaving to try out for a while. Seem to remember this happening in the past and powersaving was the culprit.

Windows - commercial by definition and now function...

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Thanks, but I don’t use power saving.

 

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Perhaps run up perfmon (search or run box will locate it) and see if the CPU load shoots up when the problem manifests, as the problem sounds as if either the CPU is bust or the data is getting slow to obtain, which could be a developing windows drive issue or simply the drive is being kept busy by another process. To narrow that to something keeping it busy use crystaldiskinfo for a quick verdict on the drive status:

https://www.askwoody.com/2021/freeware-spotlight-crystaldiskinfo/

assuming all is well (the crystaldiskinfo interface remains on off green colour) then held CTRL and ALT down and press the delete key one the problem manifests and left click “task manager”.

In task manager, left click the headers (CPU, memory, disk) one at a time to sort the data with the high values at the top and see if a common theme exists between the top items on two or more columns, or if you have no ideas, maybe snapshot the window  and post it so we can see what’s holding things up.(To do that, with the task manager highlighted left click on the title bar to make sure] hold the ALT key down and press the key or combination of keys to give “print screen” (in the bunch of keys to the right of the main keyboard on the 101 key boards etc) – for example that function requires you hold Fn and press insert to get “print screen” on some Dells keyboards.)

That done, open paint (search box will find it), left click the paste menu (at the top left) and paste in that menu,  and the image in paint should be as the window appeared –  use file, then “save as” , and select “jpeg”, save your file in a known place with a sensible name,  and post the results here so we can literally see what your machine is doing. If you’re mouse will allow you can drag the pasted image down further each time to get the top few items for each category on view but given the situation maybe just get what you can.. or take a note of the top item in each category manually if the mouse is unusable.

One final thing – press the left hand shift key five times – does Windows offer to turn sticky keys on or off ? and if its on, can you turn it off or is it back on after you restart the machine? The bizarre logic here is a keyboard fault can activate this feature  (https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/cant-turn-off-sticky-keys/68b20832-a696-482e-a126-c5efc24f0497) and then continue to bombard the machine with data causing it to slow – the other proof is if you unplug the keyboard and give the machine time to process the data in the buffer, after a short period the mouse should become responsive again.

 

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WSpfeldmann

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I did not mean the CPU is “bust” – I don’t know how that got there! – “overloaded or overheating” was what I meant to type!

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Thanks for the suggestions. I’m still not sure what was going on, but I switched to a spare mouse (hard wired USB) and it is now working acceptably. I suppose the trackball I had been using, perhaps 2 years old, may have degenerated in some way.

Does anyone have a recommendation for a good trackball?

Again, thatnks for the suggestions.

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The only difference in the interfaces is that PS2 and serial mice have associated interrupts (but the serial mouse comes via a COM port which is usually a Windows driver so the chances of an issue there are low..).

The only thing I can think is that your hardware is particularly old and the BIOS has an option “plug and play” (…operating system) which might be set to disabled (off) due to some disturbance to those settings, so the interrupt processing (including the PS2 mouse port) is being routed through the BIOS handling, rather than Windows, which slows things down..

Changing the device has worked so you can hopefully rule out disk issues or overheating as likely now. It could be a port fault, so probably worth sticking with USB and turning off the PS2 port, should the BIOS option exist (just in case the port is faulty and the situation progresses to cause more issues)

 

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Old Guy,

The machine I’m using is just one year old, supposedly latest technology! I know obsolescence is a factor in computer hardware, but this would be stretching the point a bit.  The trackball was one year older than the machine.  🙂

Thanks anyways.

-Another Old Guy

 

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I selected by user name based on having left an organisation where I was older than my co-workers and, come the end, I was older than my management. Since arriving here I’ve found out where many guys of my generation are – and a few to whom I’d be a bit of a young upstart so with hindsight I could have been a bit more imaginative in the choice!

As to the track ball – I take it you’ve cleaned it? (usually rotate the ring around the ball (bayonet fitting usually), invert and remove fluff before refitting)

To be honest if it’s that good for you and it looks like it needs replacing as cleaning didn’t work, why not open it up and see if it’s simply a few hairs wrapped around the “plain” end of the opto interrupter shafts the track ball turns (they can get on the other end but the disk usually intercepts them). To access the insides expect at least one screw under a sticker or foot, and the tops tend to “hinge off” at the wire end where they don’t just lift off. Keep an eye on the pressure roller (the one which isn’t at 90 degrees to any other roller) and its spring, as the latter is often only held by the top of the device and it may try to leave, so operate gently and slowly.

Hairs can get stuck in the lubricant and wrap themselves around so sometimes you have to extract the shaft and blot off the grease to see them- any light grease (or even petroleum jelly) will do in re-fitting, but keep the vanes on the opto disk clean. My other pet hate for mechanical devices was the grey layer of paper size and grease that can form on the rollers of mechanical mice, but being off the desk the trackball negated that.

There seem to be a fair number of “how to clean” videos for specific trackballs, so checking out the video for a similar device could help.

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“oldguy” writes:

I selected by user name based on having left an organisation where I was older than my co-workers and, come the end, I was older than my management. Since arriving here I’ve found out where many guys of my generation are – and a few to whom I’d be a bit of a young upstart so with hindsight I could have been a bit more imaginative in the choice!

———-

No worries. You’ll get there eventually! A small warning meme for you attached.  🙂

“oldguy” writes:

As to the track ball – I take it you’ve cleaned it? (usually rotate the ring around the ball (bayonet fitting usually), invert and remove fluff before refitting)

 

BINGO! This is my first trackball for almost 30 years; now 2 years old.  I opened and cleaned a small amount of lint and fluff out of it, and the thing is behaving beautifully!

BTW, This Kensington trackball does not use a bayonet mount for its ball, rather a small hole under the thing in which to stick you pinky and force the ball out of its mount.

 

THANK YOU.  🙂

 

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