My program crashes when I drag the cursor too fast to copy something. How do I fix that?

In this excerpt from Answercast #74, I look at a case where mouse movement is causing a crash. The first step in diagnosis is to clearly explain the problem!

Fast mouse movement causes crash

We need to start with a little bit of clarification of terminology. It’s important to realize that “pages” don’t crash. Browsers crash, programs crash, and computers crash – but “pages” don’t crash.

“Pages” are being displayed by something.

Now, since you’re using the term “pages,” I’m going to assume you mean something like a “web page.” Perhaps you’re looking at it in your web browser – and that, in fact, it’s the web browser that is going away.

The same concept can apply to other programs as well. You could be looking at a page I suppose in a PDF reader or in a Word document. In which case, any of those fall into this category of a “program” crashing.

So it’s not the page that crashed, it’s the program.

Getting tech help

I hate to be a stickler on terminology – but one of the reasons that it’s very important to use the correct terminology when referring to what’s happening with your computer is that it gives people like me a much better chance of correctly or at least more closely, answering the real question – answering the real problem that you’re presenting.

Like I said, pages don’t crash; programs and computers do (and sometimes a little too often!)

The program that you’re running? I don’t know what it is. It could be a browser; it could be a word processor; it could be a PDF reader; it could be any number of things.

Program crashes

If it’s the program that goes away, then the first thing that I would do is I would actually make sure you are running the most recent version of that program.

Very often, there can be bugs in the software that manifest like this. This bug sounds kind of serious (I’m kind of surprised it made it out), but that kind of bug is often fixed in revisions of the software: revisions that have come out, perhaps, after you’ve purchased, or acquired, your copy.

Browser fixes

Similarly, if you’re looking at a browser, specifically, one of the first things I would do is go in and turn off the add-ons in that browser. Those add-ons could be what has the bug. They are things you can turn off! If turning off the add-ons makes this problem go away, then you can start re-enabling them one at a time to see which one it is that (once you re-enable it) causes that problem to come back.

So that’s the first, program-level, way of looking at this.

Computer crashing

If in fact it’s your computer that ends up crashing (or rebooting or going down), the very first thing I would try actually is your display driver.

The mouse and the display driver have a very interesting and low-level interaction with each other. It is very possible that issues with either (though typically it’s the video driver) can cause odd behavior like this – behavior that causes the computer to crash.

In fact, it is conceivable, given the various protection models that are in place (for whatever version of Windows you’re running) that the video driver could cause the application (again, whatever application that is) to crash.

It’s worth looking at your video driver. Make sure that the drivers for your video card are as up-to-date as possible.

Those are two directions I would send you off in:

1. Make sure you’re running the latest version of whatever program it is that’s crashing;
2. And make sure you’re running the latest drivers for your video card (if getting the latest version of the program that’s crashing doesn’t solve your problem.)

(Transcript lightly edited for readability.)