Microsoft mouse has mind of it's own
 

My mouse has a mind of its own. Sometimes I have to fight it to make it go where I want. I have a concern it is someone controlling my GUI or it is set-up wrong. But why is it that I will go to move my mouse sometimes and it will be near the menu bar and want to be near it when I am trying to do something. And this is an optical mouse......so it should be smooth control. It is a USB/PS2 Basic optical mouse. I have it set up as Generic (PS2) Wheel Mouse. Is this the right selection. Should I be concerned with someone having remote control acccess to my GUI?

99.99% of the time that is a hardware problem usually related to your choice of mouse protocol or other mouse miss-configurations, rather than a hacker. Try re-configuring your Xserver settings. In the redhat GUI you can use redhat-config-mouse and try selecting a different mouse protocol. You might also want to specify what brand and model of mouse you're using, so someone can point you to the proper one.

Moved to Linux-Hardware

I have the same problem
 

I've been fighting the same problem on my machine. When I am not moving the mouse, it stays put as it should. When I start moving it, it will periodically jump to a corner, or toward one if I'm close enough to the corner opposite the one it seems to be aiming at.

Very odd stuff.

Relevant sections from config file

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Configured Mouse"
Driver "mouse"
Option "CorePointer"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "Protocol" "ImPS/2"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Generic Mouse"
Driver "mouse"
Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Protocol" "ImPS/2"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

I've had similar quirks, though not often; I suspect it's due to USB problems, since it has only happened with USB mice. It occasionally (rarely) jitters a bit, and becomes totally erratic when I'm doing anything else with USB at the time (such as downloading photos from my camera). Don't know how to fix 'em, though...

Confirmed
 

I too have the MS Basic Optical Mouse and have installed RedHat 9, Mandrake 9.2 and now SuSE 9.0 and gotten the same inconsistent behaviour.

The mouse exihibits the same 'jumpy' errative if plugged into a USB port or with an adapter into the PS2 port. Its consistently bad with varying mouse settings as well.

I've given up and will be getting a roller mouse shortly.