Weird Mouse Problem

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

I'm unable to navigate menus with keyboard if the cursor rests on a menu item as it keeps stealing focus. I can live with this behaviour in regular apps but it won't let me play any full-screen games as the cursor remains locked in a fixed position.

I tried turning off compiz and removing all the dotfiles but it didn't help.

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

Solution 1:

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).

Solution 2:

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.

Solution 3:

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.