Yesterday the pointer on my PC started to have a small blue circle spinning around while hovering over a thread. Still doing it this morning. I went to settings and it said that this was something running in the background, but it does it on every thread. What Up? miles

Ok. I had just gone and cleared out cookies on the PC, tested and it was still doing it. Since posting this question, it has not done this again. Happened yesterday every time I was on, and again this morning. Strange stuff. miles

It is back. miles

I'd like to help Miles, but it would be the blind leading the blind. Good luck, maybe someone will come along, and be of real help.

Is it doing it just in the internet browser? Does it happen while the browser is closed?

Have you tried opening the task manager and seeing what is running in the background?

Restarted the computer, still there, but went to the pointer settings for another try, and it is gone for now. miles

It is back. Seems to come on when I start Firefox. Task manager shows that is all that is running. I did get an upgrade a couple of days ago. miles

I get the spinning circle to tell me that something is loading or processing. It normally disappears shortly. Have you tried a different browser, Chrome, Edge, or IE, to see if's doing it there?

It has nothing to do with the webpage you're on - or even the browser. It means the processor is doing something else and can't do what you just asked it to do. You'd see it on a bare desktop.

Usually, that happens during a software update, or some other "behind the scenes" thing that Windows is doing. A pain but harmless. Just let it run until it's done. If you try to reboot, and you see a blue screen that says "Don't turn off your computer" you know it's a Windows update.

But it can also mean you have an infection and your machine has been co-opted to do nasty stuff. First, close your wi-fi connection. That gets you free of the internet and anything going in or out without your knowledge. Then, run both an anti-virus (like Avast!) and a malware (like Malwarebytes) scan. After they find and remove anything nasty, reboot.

I powered up my travel laptop yesterday to let it catch up on any Windows updates it may have missed since I used it last, and it showed that little blue circle running for almost an hour. So there was a lot going on. And it made me reboot three times in the process.

Try reloading the mouse drivers.

In task manager did you just check "Applications" only or did you also try clicking on the "Processes" and " Services" tabs?
The reason I ask is there may be more running in the background than what is shown in the "Applications" tab. In the "Processes" tab watch the CPU usage numbers to see what else may be running and if so what and where. Operating system, browser, Adobe, antivirus updates as well as full system virus and malware scans running in the background can last a long time sometimes.

A little more info. It does not seem to do it in Explorer, only Firefox. The blue spinning circle starts and stops as I move from one topic to another, but starts when I hover. It will still be there when I close fire fox for a little bit, then goes away. Back when I open Firefox. miles

Miles, are you using a good ad blocker? If not, the "I'm busy" circle may mean that ads are loading every time you change pages.

If you aren't, may I suggest loading uBlock Origin? It is superior to other blockers I've used.

This is exactly right. This is another process issue masquerading as a mouse problem. I am 99% confident it has nothing to do with the mouse. It is related to whatever your mouse is hovering over when it happens. If it is hovering over the browser at the time, but the spinning wheel goes away when you hover the mouse over, let's say, the blank desktop or the start menu or taskbar, it's related to the browser process.

If that's the case, it could be a complicated thing to trouble shoot. The browser could be corrupt and need to be reinstalled. You already cleared your cookies. Hopefully, you are not using Internet Explorer, as it sucks. But if you are using a 3rd party browser like Chrome or Firefox, I would back up you favorites/bookmarks, uninstall the browser and reinstall it. If that doesn't work, I would update anything that is considered a browser plug in, such as java, flash, ad blocker etc.

For some reason my protection was turned off. I tried to turn it on and could not. Uninstalled and reloaded and now I am not seeing the blue circle. May come back, but gone for now. I am using ad blocker and no adds ever showed up here. It seem to be related to starting Firefox, but not sure. Thanks all for the ideas of what to check. miles

Glad you got it fixed, miles. Do consider changing to uBlock Origin, though. It really is a lot better.

It wouldn't hurt to scan for malware. I do that whenever weird things happen. Seldom a scan finds something sneaked in, AVG does a good job, but every so often something gets by. If not that it's usually a setting somewhere.

BTW, there is a war against ad blockers so something, somewhere, may have changed a setting.