Vista - erratic mouse movement, IRQ sharing?

Recently built a new pc for work and I have been having a problem with my
mouse (Intellimouse 3.0) and occasionally one of my four monitors (odd
flicker - Viewsonic 19" LCD). I work from home as a trader and use
Tradestation in addition to a few other programs. I posted my issue there
and it was suggested that my system was sharing IRQ's which causes my
problmes. My system is as follows: Asus P5K, Intel quad core 6600, 2 meg
ram, Nvidia 280 PCIe dual head video card (with 2 DVI connected 19"
monitors), Nvidia 280 PCI (with 2 DVI connected 19" monitors), USB mouse and
keyboard connected through a 4 port hub, onboard LAN all running on Vista
Home Premium addition. My problem is when I run all my trading software
(Tradestation, Interactive Brokers, Windows Mail, Internet Explorer). While
all these are running, I show about half of the ram used and the cpu's are
running 5 - 20% so nothing appears to be fully loaded. My problem is that my
mouse movement is erratic. It moves as it should about 75% of the time but
then 'catches' and them moves fine again. Usually, but not always, one of my
monitors also has artifacts or flickers in a couple of areas of the screen.
When I was informed that it might be an IRQ conflict, I checked to see which
hardware was sharing IRQ's. After much trial and error of moving cards to
different slots, I finally removed my NIC card and used the onboard ethernet
and disabled as much of the onboard hardware (firewire, floppy etc.) that I
wasn't using. Now I can get the two video cards and the USB to use different
IRQ's but the onboard ethernet is sharing an IRQ with one of the display
adaptors. I should mention that my worst problems occured when the IRQ for
the display adaptor and the USB were the same. I really have no idea whether
or not the shared IRQ's are the issue or not. My mouse only seems to work
well when I'm not running Tradestation. I'm completely out of ideas now as
to how to fix this. I'm about ready to go back to XP where I didn't have
this problem (not sure if I would have the same problems with XP or not as
this is now a different pc). If there is any other information I can provide
that might help solve this issue, I'd be happy to provide it. Thanks

Is there any chance that other activity on the Hub could be causing the
problem?
Shared IRQ's are normally only a problem with multiple high speed and time
dependent applications sharing the IRQ which it appears to be the case you
have.
"tozwp" <tozwp@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:EE83D67B-2B1F-4E32-B1AB-E9795567ACF5@xxxxxx

No other devices on the USB hub. I should mention that I have also tried a
PS2 keyboard and USB mouse without the hub but the results are the same. Is
there a way to re-assign IRQ's to the USB? I know I must have several free
ones but Vista always seems to use the same ones (16 - 18). One of the
things I had hoped for was that disabling the onboard devices such as the
firewire, serial port, floppy drive, unused IDE and removing the NIC card
would give Vista enough 'room' to put everything on its own IRQ but that
didn't happen. I've searched high and low to try to figure out how to
manually reconfigure IRQ's but have found nothing. I'm not even sure that
this is the problem. I was hoping that by using mainstream compents
(Microsoft mouse, Nvidia Quadro business video cards, Intel processor, etc.)
everything would plug and play nicely. That hasn't been the case so far.

"JW" wrote:

I just googled on

Vista reassign IRQ

and got lots of hits some of which may be of use to you.

"tozwp" <tozwp@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:B45AB515-4F1B-4753-9411-617CBB3AC89C@xxxxxx

Thanks JW. I went that route and searched also. Tried the few things that I
found such as relocating devices in different slots and disabling unused
devices. I also tried the device manager to see if I could change the
settings for the IRQ. For all of my problem devices, the checkbox for 'Use
automatic settings' is greyed out and unavailable. I haven't found anything
in all my searches that has helped other than to physically move devices and
hope that it changes the IRQ. So far it hasn't been enough for me. I've
cleaned up and removed as much as I possibly can on my pc. Its pretty bare
bones right now but it still wants to use the same IRQ's as before.

"JW" wrote:

One of your BIOS settings, I forget which one, has some control over whether
the BIOS selects IRQ or Windows selects IRQs. Sorry I forget which one it
is.
Also some mother boards allow for only 16 IRQs, however most new ones
support 24.
"tozwp" <tozwp@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:9774B046-F109-4CC3-9E51-5E634DD4CD6D@xxxxxx

Should have mentioned that I had tried that as well. Allowing the bios to
select IRQ's or Vista gives the same results. Haven't found any easy fixes
and that is why I am here. Thanks for you suggestions.

"JW" wrote:

Do the 4 monitors run as one big extended desktop and the mouse only has
trouble on one of them? If yes have you tried connecting the monitors
differently to see if the problem moves with physical connection or is tied
to a particular card connection? Or possibly the problem is related to what
application(s) on the monitor that exhibits the problem.
"tozwp" <tozwp@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:A09CA0C2-7122-46A2-97E5-FA4F7135E494@xxxxxx

Good questions. I run all 4 monitors separately. They are all 19" LCD and
have the same resolutions but are separate. My primary monitor has my task
bar and program icons. The mouse has the same 'twitchy' action on all of
them. It doesn't seem to be worse or better within any application. The
problem becomes worse when the market gets busy. In other words, when there
is more market data coming in and Tradestation is working more, the mouse
gets twitchier. When I am not loading the computer (i.e. not running
Tradestation), my mouse and screens are fine. Keep in mind that when the
computer is 'loaded', the cpu's are only running maybe 25% and the ram usage
is only about half of the available 2 gig. The data coming in is rather
small for my trading data. On the Resource Monitor, it will get up to 2-300
Kbps (my max for my dsl connection is 768ish) so I know I'm not pushing that
much data into the pc.

"JW" wrote:

It appears that some I/O activity is causing a problem in processing of the
mouse movements through your USB port.
Have you tried a PS2 Mouse or have you tried using your USB mouse with a PS2
to USB adapter?
Do you have the latest BIOS from your MOBO manufacturer installed?
Is there indication of heavy memory paging occurring? If so do you have
ReadyBoost flash memory stick or card installed?
Are you running Vista with Aero enabled?
"tozwp" <tozwp@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:833474F0-AF55-4232-B41B-B2A175E6CE12@xxxxxx