Help! Intermittent mouse/cursor misalignment.

[*(actualsize)]

I have a brand new Dell XPS 420 running Vista, and I have an infuriating
intermittent problem.

At first, I though the left-hand mouse button was broken, because sometimes
(only sometimes,) I'd hover the arrow over a box I wanted to click and
nothing would happen. Not only would it not "click," the box wouldn't even
highlight.

After awhile I figured out that the mouse worked fine, but I had to place
the arrowhead (sometimes) about 1/4 inch higher than the spot I wanted to
click. Then, for no apparent reason, the arrowhead's mathematical position
would become synched with it's visual position and it would come back into
alignment with the check boxes and dialog boxes and such.

This happens in most any program, at any time. Or not. It is most
frustrating in Quicken when I'm trying to reconcile my checking account - I
have to hover the mouse one line up from the one I really want to click. A
minute later, I won't have to and things will line-up again.

Other programs also exhibit this occasional problem, including Vista itself.
Dialog boxes and scroll bars are particularly troublesome - at times.

The mouse is the one that came with the machine. I tried another that is
known to be good - same issue. The mouse moves fine, there is no drift or
sticking. The arrowhead itself is not jumping. It's an optical mouse, and the
surface it sits on is not reflective. I don't suspect the mouse hardware.

Anyone have this problem? Could this be a Vista bug.

Yes/no?

 

[Frank Saunders MS-MVP IE,OE/WM]

I have a brand new Dell XPS 420 running Vista, and I have an infuriating
intermittent problem.

At first, I though the left-hand mouse button was broken, because
sometimes
(only sometimes,) I'd hover the arrow over a box I wanted to click and
nothing would happen. Not only would it not "click," the box wouldn't even
highlight.

After awhile I figured out that the mouse worked fine, but I had to place
the arrowhead (sometimes) about 1/4 inch higher than the spot I wanted to
click. Then, for no apparent reason, the arrowhead's mathematical position
would become synched with it's visual position and it would come back into
alignment with the check boxes and dialog boxes and such.

This happens in most any program, at any time. Or not. It is most
frustrating in Quicken when I'm trying to reconcile my checking account -
I
have to hover the mouse one line up from the one I really want to click. A
minute later, I won't have to and things will line-up again.

Other programs also exhibit this occasional problem, including Vista
itself.
Dialog boxes and scroll bars are particularly troublesome - at times.

The mouse is the one that came with the machine. I tried another that is
known to be good - same issue. The mouse moves fine, there is no drift or
sticking. The arrowhead itself is not jumping. It's an optical mouse, and
the
surface it sits on is not reflective. I don't suspect the mouse hardware.

Anyone have this problem? Could this be a Vista bug.

Yes/no?

I've never heard of this problem. Warrantee problem. Contact whoever sold
it to you for fixing or refunding.

 

[jbaker]

I have the same system with the same problem. I thought it was my mouse. I
will reply if I figure out a solution. Please do the same.

 

[*(actualsize)]

I think it is fixed. After an intervention by a Dell technician, I've been
using the machine without incident for a couple of days now.

At one point, we'd seen the following error message: The display driver has
stopped working and recovered. It all came to a head when the screen
completely winked-out and went dark - no image at all. At that point we
called Dell customer service. They hooked us up with someone in their XPS
group.

The screen came back after a restart, but it wasn't fixed yet. The Dell
technician has us log onto a Dell webpage that let him remotely take over.
Things happened pretty fast, but the main thing he did was update the drivers
for our Raedon ATI 2600 XT video card.

Eveything has been normal after the reboot. No odd error messages, no
hiccups causing the image to wink out, and, most important to this thread,
the cursor offset problem has seemingly disappeared. The arrowhead now
lines-up with the dialog boxes and check boxes on the screen and, as a
result, every mouse-click works properly.

If yo u don't hear from me again, that means it hasn't recurred.

Dan

 

[jbaker]

Reinstalled driver and that corrected the issue.

The only thing I could find that was close to what you describe was
probably fixed by reinstalling or updating the video driver for the
system. Unfortunately, the notes I read over are not clear as to what
specific driver was reinstalled that fixed the problem, however.

From what you describe, the only other fix I can think of right off
hand would be to open up the control panel and uninstall the entry for
the mouse (right click and select the uninstall or remove option), then
restart the computer. When it starts up it should automatically
reinstall the mouse drivers (since they are part of the core Windows
files). If that driver is what was corrupted this should fix it.

If you have any questions about the system itself, or neither of these
suggestions fix the problem, I'll be happy to provide any additional
help I can.

Larry
Dell Customer Advocate

 

[mossara]

I had the described, very irritating, inconsistant cursor problem for
three months, ever since I first installed my new Inspiron 530 early
Jan. 2008. I searched for a solution a few times, but always thought
it was due to something with the mouse or its driver. And never had
time to look into it further. Finally, as my sanity was in question
due to the constant irritation of dealing with repositioning the
cursor as it seemingly randomly was off by a quarter inch or flew off
to the corner of the screen, I found time to search for a solution.

This thread pointed me to the solution! I reinstalled the video
driver, and at last I have a normal, accurate mouse cursor.

I must add, that I hesitated to install the driver because my system
has the "ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT", and the 2600 XT driver in the list of
recommended drivers to install was listed as an AMD driver. A quick
check on Wikipedia showed me that ATI was taken over by AMD, so they
are the same.

So far, all seems well. What a relief.

Sara