Laptop Problem: Mouse Flickers, Refreshes Application Windows

[carloliwanag]

Hi there,
I have an old laptop. I installed Windows XP and Ubuntu.
My problem is after sometime, the mouse flickers alternating from the normal
mouse pointer to read animation and back. This happens in both OS's so I guess it is not a software problem, probably hardware. I just don't know what part of the laptop.
Also, when this happens in ubuntu, when I open a terminal, many characters of "~" (tilde) is written in the window continuosly.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thank you very much.

[bucksfanjimj]

Have you run any virus or spyware scans recently? Have you tried adjusting the settings in Control Panel?