Since it happened in 2 browsers I think the mouse would have been the first thing that would have occurred to me. Did have something similar years ago and more recently with a wireless mouse that had some gunk in it.

My other bete noire is gunk in the keyboard having a ctrl or alt key behaving as if pressed. Very annoying and manifesting in odd ways.

As to laptops with an external mouse I make it a point to turn off the touch pad completely as a spec of dust can make the mouse spastic <s>


>I was experiencing strange behavior with my browser! If I moved my cursor it would often jump to a previous page or even a different tab. Often the cursor would freeze. Sometimes (less than 10% of the time) the cursor would come back to life and allow me to continue, but 90% of the time when that happened I had to turn off my computer.
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>I noticed that this behavior of the mouse freezing also occurred when I was in an application so I decided to take action. This is a strange remedy as was the problem but it has cured all issues with the jumping cursor, jumping to previous pages or tabs within a browser or frozen cursor. I decided to replace the mouse and it resolved all of the above issues! I thought that I would let you all know the resolution as the problems were strange and I am happy to have found the solution. Perhaps no one else will have this problem but who knows?
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>At first I thought that the issues were due to my IE Browser. But when I used Firefox the same things would happen. That is when I noticed the problem showing up when using applications.
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>Computers are so much fun! I know this to be true as I have been working with them since 1962, from main frames to hand held devices. :)
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>Sometimes I thing that going back to smoke signals is a good idea! :)