Herky jerky mouse

ASUS P5lD2

The PS2 mouse is not responding very well. Jumps and jerks and you try to
move it around. Have to click 4 or 5 times in order for Windows to 'catch'
the click command.
Changed to a USB mouse and the problem seems to have gone away.

Thinking it's an IRQ problem, I've tried:
Changing the BIOS option of Plug and Play OS to both Yes and No. No help.
I tried changing the option, Allocate IRQ to PCI video card to both Enable
and Disable. No help.
Also, cleaned up the MSCONFIG list so that only the video, antivirus, and
Point32 drivers load at startup.
Tried shutting down all non-essential processes in Task Manager.

I need the USB slot and so would like to get this fixed so that I can go
back to a PS2 mouse.

Any ideas on what else to check?

--

T.O. Galloway

In article <btednSvPu9zAdRnenZ2dnUVZ_vmdnZ2d.TakeThisOut@comcast.com>, "T.O."
<corpNOSPAM.TakeThisOut@comcast.net> wrote:

> ASUS P5lD2
>
> The PS2 mouse is not responding very well. Jumps and jerks and you try to
> move it around. Have to click 4 or 5 times in order for Windows to 'catch'
> the click command.
> Changed to a USB mouse and the problem seems to have gone away.
>
> Thinking it's an IRQ problem, I've tried:
> Changing the BIOS option of Plug and Play OS to both Yes and No. No help.
> I tried changing the option, Allocate IRQ to PCI video card to both Enable
> and Disable. No help.
> Also, cleaned up the MSCONFIG list so that only the video, antivirus, and
> Point32 drivers load at startup.
> Tried shutting down all non-essential processes in Task Manager.
>
> I need the USB slot and so would like to get this fixed so that I can go
> back to a PS2 mouse.
>
> Any ideas on what else to check?

I find this table interesting. It tells you what devices have
a higher service priority than the others. Notice how the
System Timer has the highest priority. There are "IRQ holders"
higher in priority than the mouse, and "IRQ holders" lower
in priority than the mouse.

IRQ Priority Standard Function
0 1 System Timer
1 2 Keyboard Controller
2 ‹ Re-direct to IRQ#9
4 12 Communications Port (COM1)*
5 13 IRQ holder for PCI steering*
6 14 Floppy Disk Controller
7 15 Printer Port (LPT1)*
8 3 System CMOS/Real Time Clock
9 4 IRQ holder for PCI steering* (ACPI mode when used?)
10 5 IRQ holder for PCI steering*
11 6 IRQ holder for PCI steering*
12 7 PS/2 Compatible Mouse Port*
13 8 Numeric Data Processor
14 9 Primary IDE Channel
15 10 Secondary IDE Channel

* These IRQs are usually available for ISA or PCI devices.

Find a tool that can display the IRQ number (the number in the
left hand column), and see which devices are "ahead" of your
mouse from a priority perspective. Maybe lifting the mouse
to IRQ 9 would help ? I vaguely remember doing something like
this with a sound card once, and getting a bit of relief from
crackling by doing it. (Enabling "Delayed Transaction" helped
a lot more, but your BIOS doesn't have a setting for that.)

What is your hardware inventory like these days ? Anything
exotic in the PCI slots ?

Either some device has a long service time (preventing the
mouse interrupt from being serviced), or some device is
having an "interrupt storm". There is likely some obscure
Windows feature, for being able to view interrupt counts in
a performance monitor window - good luck figuring that
out

HTH,
Paul