For something based on 1’s and 0’s, computers really suck serious monkey nut sometimes.
So I put together my new game machine, and everything appears to work fine. Boots on the first try w/o error after assembly. Memtest86 runs overnight without issue. 3DMark01/03 run looped without issue. XP Pro install goes fine.
All in all, and easy time.
But at some point, the mouse starts going herky jerky (yes, that’s a technical term) on me. I searched Google, and found everything from IRQ conflicts, to drivers; bad MS Hotfixes to AGP port speed; disk contention to CPU issues. You name it. I tried it.
I even tried 3 different mice. Nothing helped.
Then the light bulb went on. Mouse X/Y movement jittered, but the buttons, scroll wheel, and the keyboard all worked fine. Hmmm. Then I remembered that all 3 of the mice I tried were some sort of optical mice. So I dug up an old crusty ball mouse (he he, he said ball) and sure as shit…it worked!
Now, that solution by itself would make sense to me if it weren’t work the fact that I have been using that very [problemed] optical mouse on my old computer, on the same OS, using the same drivers, on the same desk surface without any issues. WTF? I then plugged the problem mouse back in. The jitters reappeared. I put a sheet of white paper underneath and the jitters went away? Again, What The Hell?
Why these optical mice worked on my old system on this desk surface, yet those same mice jittered on my new computer on the same desk is a mystery to me beyond fathom.