I think I've been hit by a trojan or some other intruder! My mouse cursor is acting crazy, jumping all around my screen, leaving me frequently unable to control it for long periods. It likes to zip over to the right side of the screen -- where I can't see it -- and it often refuses to be dragged back to the screen area when it does this. I run SpyBot and Adaware on pretty much a daily basis, but they're not detecting anything, even though I used the latest updated definitions. I've noticed my Firefox browser is slower to open and I suspect that these 2 occurrences may be related. Anyone have an idea what's going on here and how to stop it? Anyone else experienced this?

is your mouse PS2 or USB? I would try a different mouse, maybe borrow one from family or friends. Also you could go into your device manager and uninstall the mouse and reboot...it will reload again and see if it still acts the same. Might just be a corrupted driver. If that fails, post back Hopefully my advice will help you...Please post back with your results....thanks

XpUser4Real made some good points I just want to add: This is frequent to users with mice using laser pointer (or even mice with a ball). Make sure your surface can be used for mouse with laser (if that's what you use), i.e. use a clean stack of white paper, see if that helps. On the other hand, if your mouse uses ball-pointer, then it might need some cleaning :) You can open and extract the ball from the bottom of the mouse, wash it with soap, wipe it with a clean cloth (no fuzzy stuff!), and clean the trackers from the inside of the mouse (see the bottom after you take out the ball) with a pinceta, I don't know this object in english, sorry for the word, there's an image of it here: http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/1985/c23041a1kk.jpg Just watch it that you don't damage the rubber that is around the trackers or the rubber ball!

Turns out it was the mouse after all! I rebooted, using a different PS2 mouse, and the cursor acted normally. I did find a large amount of dust inside the first mouse, which I only discovered after unscrewing the back of it, but even after cleaning it out and plugging it back in, the cursor reverted to its same crazy behavior, leading me to conclude that the problem developed in the electronics of it. With that, I pitched it to the trash and am now happy again and using the replacement mouse.

Thanks for posting back and I'm glad your problem is resolved Hopefully my advice will help you...Please post back with your results....thanks

try useing another mouse, or go to your control panel and check your settings.