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Mouse pointer freezes I own a Compaq Presario laptop. The mouse pointer freezes sometimes for a long time even when I am not opening a program. This problem becomes worse when I am on the internet, and sometimes I have to restart my computer. Have you any explanation for my problem? The reason for the mouse pointer freezing permanently is usually a hardware conflict affecting the IRQ (interrupt request) line used by the mouse. Try running the Hardware Conflict Troubleshooter from Windows Help. If the pointer freezes for a few seconds at a time, this may be due to a number of reasons. Badly written programs may be disabling interrupts for long periods, so that mouse movement interrupts cannot be processed. Try disabling as many background utilities as you can to see if that solves the problem. If you are still using old 16bit programs, these can also cause the pointer to freeze for long intervals. Since your computer is a laptop, you should also check that the power management settings aren't causing the hard disk to turn off. Your pointer could be freezing because Windows has to wait for the drive to come up to speed again before it can perform a disk access. Another possibility is that your hard disk is failing and your PC is having trouble reading from or writing to the hard drive. If a disk transfer that should normally take a fraction of a second takes several seconds to perform, the system may appear to freeze while Windows keeps retrying the access. Run ScanDisk and choose the option to perform a thorough test. If this finds a lot of errors, be prepared to replace the hard disk.
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