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Cursor Movement Delay

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9 replies

by rollythegoalie

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We have a new Dell Precision workstation with Windows NT 4.0 that just came in-house. After the initial login, the cursor movement on the screen is extremely sluggish. In other words when the mouse is moved, the screen cursor takes a few seconds to figure out where its new position is. This behaviour lasts about twenty minutes and then (for some unknown reason)the cursor tracks properly. If anyone has experienced this behaviour and knows how to fix it, I would appreciate your input. Thanks.

9 replies

by hinrgman

You have a procees running in the background - defragg, scandisk or most likely a virus scan which is monolopizing the processor resources and and your cursor waits next in line for its turn.
Check to see what is in your startup. You may need some tweeking of your system or more memory to help rectify this problem...
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by grosskey

It could be that background programs are causing the slowdown, but more than likely it's a driver conflict or other issue. First zap any background programs or processes that you don't need and disable any feature in them that loads them at startup.

Next, make sure you have updated drivers installed for all devices, especially the display adapter.

by dgust

I believe this is a hardware problem. I would swap out the video card and see if the problem persists. If you have an identical card that is OK or it can be different. Anytime something takes a while to change, it sounds like a thermal problem in hardware.

by jimandkathy

If you had a thermal problem it would get worst the longer you had the computer on. If it was a hardware problem or a driver problem it would not clear up in twenty minutes. The mouse has a very low priority for the CPU and can be slowed down whenthe CPU is busy. When you are booting into Windows the mouse is delayed until the CPU has finished most of the loading of drivers, and programs. If the CPU is trying to load drivers or programs that are not there it wastes time looking for them. If you are loading many programs or large programs they also keep the CPU busy. Utilities such as Anti-Virus, defragging, hard drive checks, and general checkup programs like System Works can slow down the CPU. Loading incompatible programs that are not written for the Operating System can slow down the CPU. Last, connecting to a misconfigured network or trying to connect to a network that is not there will slow down the computer a lot. Remember to hug your mother on mother?s day.

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