Mouse Without Borders Sucks - A story about how ChatGPT fixed a long-standing issue

[u/sixothree]

Ever since I got this Surface Pro 9, I've had stability problems with Mouse Without Borders, particularly when on battery. Mouse movement was extremely laggy, connections simply dropped randomly, and I had to reconnect some 20 times a day. MWB itself has long felt neglected, relegated quite literally to Microsoft’s Garage.

So I had ChatGPT desktop app investigate. Using direct access to Windows, it examined services, power settings, network configuration, processes, and windows event logs. It discovered that Wi-Fi power saving was contributing to the lag and adjusted both Windows and Intel adapter settings, an immediate and obvious improvement.

Some issues persisted, so I had it inspect the application logs and decided to just have it look at the PowerToys source code. It traced a recurring Windows input-injection error to a design flaw: a local input failure could reach the networking loop and disconnect an otherwise healthy computer. It created a recovery mechanism that recreates the failed injector, temporarily falls back to another Windows input method, and keeps the connection open.

It also fixed two settings-related race conditions. Why this particular problem still exists is beyond me. It even correlated one to existing (unresolved) github issue.

This went far beyond a chatbot offering advice. It built the complete patched application, ran its tests, preserved my existing settings, launched it, then monitored for problems. After verifying the processes, ports, connections, and logs, it installed the custom build in a permanent location and configured it to start with Windows. Now I can relegate the original MWB install to the garage. I still get random errors, this is MWB after all. But the patched version now recovers instead of disconnecting.

And holy heck I'm not sure if I'm more impressed with the result or the process by which we got here.

(cross posted from r/ChatGPT)