Erratic Mouse Behavior

I'm having an issue on my desktop computer where my mouse pointer sticks to the edges of my screen, typically the top right corner, and any attempt to move it away will cause it to snap back to that position like a rubber band. Because of this, I am unable to use my mouse.

I was able to resolve this issue by blacklisting the psmouse module in /etc/modprobe.d, as recommended by Dell (and on the Ubuntu forums a few years ago) here.

However, blacklisting the psmouse module causes resume from suspend issues. Specifically, after suspend, my mouse will move very slowly and have a stutter/lag to it, and my audio will stutter. When I launch the psmouse module, both the mouse and audio issue go away, but I am then unable to use my mouse again.

I am currently running a fresh installation of Pop!_OS 18.10, but have confirmed the issue exists on latest Ubuntu LTS and 18.10

My system is using Nvidia 410 drivers and an i7-4770K. The issues persist regardless of the connected peripherals. I have tried different mice, keyboards, etc.

Does anyone have any suggestions for resolving the mouse issue without blacklisting or removing psmouse via modprobe?


I figured it out. I allowed the mouse to exhibit it's odd behavior and was able to run xinput while it was doing so. It revealed an entry called "PS/2 Generic Mouse". Disabling this generic device allowed my mouse to work normally without having to blacklist psmouse. You can disable it with the command

xinput disable id#

If you want to disable a xinput pointer entry permanently, you can do so by creating "xorg.conf" in /etc/X11 and entering the following:

Section "InputClass"
   Identifier         "disable broken device"
   MatchIsPointer     "on"
   MatchProduct       "PS/2 Generic Mouse"
   Option             "Ignore" "on"
EndSection

Credit goes to this Stack Exchange Unix & Linux post