[ltp] CMOS Battery and Dodgy Mouse?

[Huntress Gary B NPRI]

My daughter was using my 600e today and found that the pointer was jumpy and erratic.  I ended up having to ctrl-alt-backspace to terminate X and then I began to investigate.

The problem with the mouse persisted in bash, so I restarted gpm with the same result.

I rebooted and went into seutp, ran the system test and received the error regarding "low backup battery" and now I have a new battery on order.  

Now the interesting thing is, I removed the backup battery and rebooted. Of course I got an error and was kicked into the bios setup....but here is the odd thing (to me):   The mouse is *still* jumpy and erratic in the BIOS setup with no (apparently bad) battery.

Am I chasing two problems?  And if so, what else might cause a jumpy mouse in BIOS?

Regards,

Gary H.