Often and for no apparent reason the cursor begins to move as if through mud whenever the WE window is active (e.g. I have to move the mouse twice as far as usual to get the cursor where I want it on the screen). This can happen while WE is open or when I reopen it. This poky cursor is the only symptom; every other WE feature works fine. It used to happen infrequently in the past and was solved by defragging the drive; but now it occurs often and I'm out of ideas as to what's causing it.

I've run my topnotch antivirus and spyware apps, defragged and optimized the drive, shut down ALL active tasks, and made sure CPU usage is low and there's plenty of available memory (close to 90%) -- all to no avail. Because of this problem, I've installed an alternate file manager which usually works fine when WE's dragging, but now I find that sometimes the other file manager starts to drag and WE works fine; and sometimes both start to drag! The only temporary cures I've found so far are: (1) rebooting, and (2) sometimes, after a while, the program simply returns to normal on its own!

I know this may sound like a small glitch, but it's a real hassle having to move the mouse all the way to the edge of its pad then pick it up and put it down on the opposite edge just to get the cursor all the way over to where I want it on the screen. I'm stumped and would appreciate any ideas anyone might have. Thanks. (Win XP Home SP2, current updates)

What kind of mouse are you using? If it's USB try using a PS2 adapter it's more stable. If it's an old mouse, replace it with a new Optical mouse. Also make sure your mouse pad or the surface that the mouse is on is not worn down or too reflective. That can throw off the mouse's optical eye.
You can read through this if you have time:
http://www.smartcomputing.com/Edito...cle=articles/2004/w1509/33w01/33w01.asp&guid=

I don't think it can be the mouse. As soon as I click away from the sluggish file manager and make that window inactive, the cursor returns to normal. Click back on the file-manger window, and the cursor slows down again.