How to fix Windows 10 Mouse Lag?

A freezing or lagging mouse can be quite frustrating. In most occasions, it wastes your times and prevents you from comfortably working away on your PC. In this article, we explore different ways you can employ to fix mouse lag in Windows 10.

Categories of Mouse lag Problems in Windows 10

Mouse lagging issues can manifest in different ways:

1. Mouse Lagging When Playing Games in Windows 10 – According to many windows users, a mouse lag is common especially when playing games and consequently impacts gaming performance.
2. Mouse Freeze in Windows 10 – It’s not uncommon for Windows 10 users to experience an annoying mouse freeze. This happens when the mouse cursor or pointer sticks to one point greatly slowing down the user
3. Windows 10 Mouse Stutter – Mouse stutter is where the mouse cursor continually disappears from the screen. Like the mouse lag,  mouse stuttering is common and negatively affects a user’s productivity.
4. Mouse Pointer Lag in Windows 10 – The mouse pointer lag is prevalent among many Windows 10 users. Nearly every windows 10 user has experienced the delay at some point. The issue is easy to fix using our solutions. 
5. Wireless Windows 10 Mouse Lag – This occurs when you are using a wireless mouse and for some reason keeps freezing from time to time.

Let’s see how we can fix mouse lag issues in Windows 10 PC.

1) Re-Installing Mouse Drivers

One of the recommended remedies in resolving a mouse freeze or a mouse lag in Windows 10 is reinstalling the mouse drivers. To reinstall mouse drivers, follow the steps below:

Step 1: Access  Device Manager by Pressing the Windows Key +X and clicking on the ‘Device Manager‘ option.

Step 2: In the device manager Window, navigate to  ‘Mice And Other Pointing Devices‘ and double-click to expand and narrow to the specific mouse driver.

Step 3: Double-click on your mouse driver. This opens the mouse driver properties window as shown below. Next click on the ‘Driver‘ tab.

Step 4: Scroll down and click ‘Uninstall‘ to remove the mouse driver.

Step 5: A pop-up window appears as shown below. Check the ‘Delete the driver software for this device‘ and click the ‘Uninstall option‘.

Thereafter, you will be prompted to restart your computer. Select the  ‘Yes‘ option if you are ready to get along with it.  Otherwise, If you would like to continue with your work and restart later, click on ‘No‘. After the system reboot, your Pc will automatically reinstall the mouse software. You can now check if your mouse is working correctly.

2) Update Mouse Drivers

If you are not comfortable with uninstalling the mouse driver, you can update it as well to get the latest version of the driver which can help fix the problem. To accomplish this,

Step 1: Go to ‘Device Manager‘ , and as before,  double-click on the ‘Mice And Other Pointing Devices‘ to expand. 

Step 2: Right-click on the mouse driver and select the ‘Update driver‘ option

3) Roll back mouse drivers

You can alternatively roll back the mouse drivers to an earlier state in the event that a driver update is the cause of the problem. To achieve this, follow Steps 1 to 3 in the first solution and instead of clicking on ‘Uninstall Device’, click on ‘Roll Back Driver‘

In the pop-up window, click on the reason that prompted you to roll back the driver and click on ‘Yes‘ to roll back the driver.

4) Unplug other USB devices connected to your PC

Occasionally, other USB devices can cause interference with your mouse and cause momentary freezing. This is especially true if you have a USB hub with several devices plugged into it. Users have reported the mouse going back to its normal state after unplugging the hub and other USB devices plugged into the PC. In the future, fix mouse lag in Windows, you may consider unplugging other USB from your PC.

5) Install the official Driver for your Mouse

Official device drivers are always preferred to drivers from third-party vendors. Users have reported a remarkable improvement in their mouse usage when using the official drivers. By default, Windows takes care of that, but should you find yourself not using the official drivers, consider uninstalling the driver and manually install drivers from the manufacturer.

6) Disable Cortana

This may sound a little weird and somewhat far fetched, but disabling Cortana has been known to resolve the mouse lag or stutter issue. For those of you who are not familiar with Cortana, Cortana is Microsoft’s audio assistant that lets users interact with the PC by issuing audio commands.

7) Disable Fast startup

The fast startup feature is useful for windows 10 users as it enables the computer to start faster after a system reboot.  However, many users have reported that using the feature could cause mouse lag issues. To fix the problem, we have to disable the Fast Startup feature. Follow our guide below on disabling this feature:

Step 1: Press Windows Key + R button. Type ‘Control Panel’  and hit ENTER to access the Control Panel window.

Step 2: Click on the ‘Hardware and Sound’ option 

Step 3: Next, click on ‘Power options’ and then click on ‘Change what the Power buttons do’

Step 4:  In the next Window, click on ‘Change settings that are currently unavailable’ option.

Finally, uncheck the ‘Fast startup option‘

8) Adjust Power Management settings for USB

Step 1: Access  Device Manager by Pressing the Windows Key +X and clicking on the ‘Device Manager‘ option.

Step 2: In the device manager Window, scroll and locate the ‘Universal Serial Bus controllers’ Click to expand.

Step 3:  Double-click on any USB Hub device to open its properties.  In the Properties Window, Click on the ‘Power Management‘ tab and uncheck ‘Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power’ option.

We do hope that the 8 solutions offered will help you fix your mouse lagging or stuttering issues and get you back on course! Feel free to get back to us with any feedback on the same.

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Margaret

Hey, this is Margaret, a Windows Systems Administrator who’s in love with everything about tech.