Weird Mouse Problem

hey there,

I'm facing a weird problem. My mouse automatically focuses on menu items.

For example, when I am browsing a menu, the cursor rests on say menu-item-1 and I start navigating the menu using my keyboard.What happens is within one second the menu-item under the cursor gets focus automatically. I can live with this in the menu, but I can't play games like Urban Terror. The cursor has a fixed position in the game, when i move it, it returns to the fixed position after a second.

I tried turning off compiz but it didn't help. I even deleted all . files and folders in home to reset defauls but that didn't help either.

Here is a video my mouse stealing focus: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/275756/mouse.ogv

I tried turning off compiz but it didn't go away.

From ubuntu Owais Lone

• Can you try another mouse? I say that because I've had something like this before (way back when I was on Windows) and it was actually a dodgy connection in the mouse's cable that was causing tiny movements. It looks like your cursor doesn't move but there might tiny movements that you can't see.

  Actually on that note you could fire up xev from a terminal and leave your cursor in the white box that pops up. If, once you've left the mouse alone, signals still explode out of the terminal, you've got a problem. You'll see which signals they are. If they're movement-related, it's probably a dodgy mouse.

  If it's sending a full click, it could be hardware but it could also be accessibility settings kicking in. Check Preferences>Mouse>Accessibility and make sure "Dwell Click" is turned off.

  Owais Lone : It's not a hardware issue. The problem persists when I disconnect the mouse and use the touchpad. The problem does not show up during a live cd session either. xev also appears to be fine. It's a software problem.
  From Oli

• At around 00:20 in your video, did you click the window to focus it, or did the window focus automatically on mouse hover? It seems like something is left-clicking the pointing device (mouse/touchpad) every few seconds.

  JanC : Left-clicking would launch the menu-items, which doesn't happen. It's more like if somehow a "change focus to the widget below the cursor"-event is sent.

  Oli : If it was throwing a left-click, @10s in, the dictionary would have loaded.

  JanC : Although, no, as that wouldn't explain the thing I see in OOo. Maybe it's more like if the focus gets lost (and then the mouse pointer location is used to refocus)?
  From KeyboardMonkey

• Do you happen to use unclutter (as I do/did)?

  I see this behaviour when unclutter is running, but not when I kill it. I am not sure why it happens, as it happens "long" before unclutter hides the mouse pointer.

  It also seems like there are a bunch of bug reports related to this issue (only 3 or 4 out of 17 bugs are about unrelated issues, it seems).

  Owais Lone : That is it. The bug is in unclutter. Killing unclutter fixes it.

  JanC : You can disable unclutter automatic startup in `/etc/default/unclutter` (or uninstall it, of course).

  Owais Lone : yeah.. i already removed it.
  From JanC

• I cannot reply to other's answers yet, so here my comment to the first answer: please note that making 'unclutter' part of Ubuntu Maverick's default installation was a communication failure and not intended to happen. Indeed, the change was reverted quickly after 'unclutter' accidentally was made part of the default installation. If you have it installed still, you can remove it and should, if you want your installation to follow the official desktop.

  From Sense Hofstede