Ive been having an issue the last 2 days where my mouse cursor will freeze for a moment, then move like normal. Now I know behavior like a frozen cursor can be common, especially if a programs running. But I dont have anything new, that im aware of, running.
any ideas on what to check?

you have a virus or trojan.

try booting up a live disc and see if it happens there to rule out other things.

live disc?
I guess ill try and boot to a diff partition on a drive i disconnected a couple weeks ago.
Also i have symantec endpoint running, fully updated. If thats not detecting anything, what else might it be?
Also i was watchin a youtube vid and even the video froze along with the cursor..

edit: in retrospect, I realized my wife installed the new itunes crap yesterday. Idont recall if I really had this issue before that yesterday, but definitely afterwards.
But yea, during vids it freezes for that split sec as well. still on the main OS and what not, but antivirus' come up clean. And i did online file checks with anything i dled 2 days ago and they come up clean. argh, I hate pc mysteries.

I'd check the CPU monitor to see if it spikes at those times. That probably won't answer any questions, but adds another piece to the puzzle.

And find the program that is spiking.

any way in particular to check that? I have task manager sorted by cpu and im not having any of these spikes really when im lookin. or in the case i think I had one, nothing showed up more than 1 or 2 besides the sys idle process.
Maybe I made it sound more dramatic than it is. i seem to be fine for 5-10 mins, and during that, ill have one where it just hiccups for a sec. like i move the mouse and dont see the cursor move. so i rotate around n around, and then ill see it start up again.

i cant seem to pinpoint it. i thought maybe it was firefox, but thats not it since it happened a couple times on my desktop with nothing running.
when it was idle a bit and i came back to shake out of the screen saver, it paused a sec, then maybe 5 secs later it paused again.
I was also watchin a vid on tru.com or some crap, and that one the mouse froze but the video was fine, no skipping.
Also it doesnt seem like it buffers the mouse to move when it comes back. i was moving it across slow, and when it paused, i kept moving slowly, and when it came back it only started moving then. not like it jumped to catch up.

Virus or trojan sounds like what I had, mouse would freeze/lock up and I thought it was my batteries dying. Found a goofy named process & it kept renaming itself and was NOT removed easily & my AVG never detected it. I got rid of it but now forgot wtf it was called.

Can you go to task manager & post a screen shot where all running processes are shown so we can see.

Well I tend to often check the registry start section, startup folder, services.msc and taskmanager anytime I think somethings up.
everything seems about right to me. mediaserver is with tversity to stream vids to my 360. been using that for months. pg2 is peerguardian, started using that maybe a montha go, dont think that was it. rest is windows crap and symantec.
I did sort my cpu in taskman and wiggled the mouse, nothing went up durin the spike..

Yeah sorry I didn't mean to sound like you hadn't known to do that. We're a smart lot

Hmmm... well there is the possibility it's overwritten a legit Windows process, but...

Any conflicts listed in device manager?

Another thing I'm wondering is if maybe the chipset drivers need updating. I had a VIA motherboard that was very troublesome and gave me weird shit like this.

I was thinking something like this. cuz the pause i get is very similar to when Id plug something new in. But nah, no conflicts I see, or yellow ?.

update: I tried booting into an xp install i had that was right after installing XP. When moving around in there to try to install antivirus to run a check, it did the freeze for a sec. so Im going to hope it is some stupid hardware issue.
But now that drives in limbo courtesy acronis OS selector. it just sits forever, ESC for menu, F6 to skip menu. neither do anything, pressing nothing does nothing.. *shrug*

Got back into the other xp partition. I dont think its a virus. i didnt have this hdd hooked up at all, ide and power unplugged. i hook em up and booted into it and I was having that. man, theres always something wrong with this piece of shit hah

Im stumped. the other xp install I had was totally barebones. no system specific drivers installed, etc. Was still on 800x600 res and what not. All I did was install acronis disk director, copied it to my current OS and built on it from there.
And I had my sata hdds unplugged. only stuff plugged in was an ethernet card, which ive disabled so it isnt that. A smartcard reader plugged into the mobo, a via sata expansion card, graphics card and then the mobo stuff.
the via sata card hadnt given me problems before, but I cant think of anything else. im gonna shut down and remove that in the meantime..
WEll its not the sata card...

Here is a long shot. Since your mouse is freezing, you could always put a blanket on it.

I thought about that one too
Although once when I was typing a message, it did it and the text didnt go through. but oddly it was that one time and right after i moved to click the url bar. Im thinking it might just be mouse related at this point. I still use a ps/2 ball mouse. my friends gonna give me a couple usb mice, see if that helps.

In the meantime during my paranoia I installed zonealarm and nothing out of the ordinary asking to connect same old stuff, utorrent, aim, firefox..

Have you tried another mouse? A different USB port?

Nah, no other mice to try and its the ps/2 one. my friends gonna give me one of his, latest thursday I hope.

Try out a USB mouse and see if that works fine.

I get the Logictech optical mouse. They for like $5 PS/2 port these days.

Nod, buddy gave me a dell usb, Ima hook it up later. I hate having to adjust to a new mouse after using the same one for 5+ years..

I've been using the same mouse for almost over 5 years and it's USB, in fact my computer doesn't even have a PS/2 mouse port... and it's almost obsolete.

Then again I'm not one to talk, I have a G5 laser mouse but still use my MX500 optical as my main unit.

Im using some crap ass dell mouse that came with my sister in laws pc from many moons ago, and its a track ball.

Follow up!
I forgot when but about 2 weeks ago when I booted up, my computer didnt even detect my ps2 mouse so USB mouse is in and no problems since.