Brush Tool problems

Question

I am having an ongoing problem with the Brush Tool in my PSE9. 
I have the question written out in Word Pad but I can't seem to copy & paste it into this box.  The 1st thing I need to know is how to copy & paste my simple text question here.
Bob

Answer 1

Barbara B.:
It has been several days since I heard anything from you on my ongoing Brush Tool problem. From your digging what have you found? In the past 10 days I have continued spotting B&W negative scans & trying to collect additional information on the propensity of the brush tool to create a line running across the image. Basically what I have found reinforces the 7 points/factors I outlined in posting #14 on 7/7/12. I'll go over & expand on those again here.
1) When the line runs it always goes from where I am currently spotting to some point I previously clicked & put a spot. This is not necessarily the most recent spot. It can travel to a spot I did 30 sec. ago (& have done several others in the interim). It does need to be on the visable portion of the screen.
2) As stated. The width of the line is the same as the width of the specific selected brush size. Usually between nos. 4 & 9. The tone of the line is the same as the tone selection (so far I have only experienced this with B&W).
3) The more I spot the slower the computer's reaction time becomes. After spotting for an hour, or two, I will see several seconds between the time I click on a spot & the time the spot actually appears on the negative. I have tried turning off PSE & rebooting it. This seems to speed things back up for a while.
4) When the situation in #3 occurs I obviously can't click rapidly.
5) I still don't understand why this happens at all. I move the curser outside of the image frame towards the Vert. & Horz. slider as I get ready to move to a new part of the image. I place the curser on the slider control a left click (as though to move the slider). Instead of moving the slider it shoots one of these lines out onto the image from under the slider control & out onto the image field to some point where there was a previous spotting click. These lines will often run half way across the image field. I have saved some of these examples & could attach them to an email for you to see.
6) Once one of these lines start appearing, or running, they seem to increase with frequency. Almost as though the software is developing a memory. As I say in #3, if I re boot PSE the memory either is erased, or at least reduced.
7) The only time the original statement is not totally true is when a line runs from under the slider (which is outside the viewing area) out into the visable image field.
Here are some additional factors I have noticed:
8) I normally begin spotting by setting the view drop down to "actual pixels". I notice that If I further magnify the image by then clicking once on the "zoom in" option I have a reduced frequency if these wild lines appearing. This may be due to the fact that when the image is larger I am working (stippling) at a slower rate.
9) If I have a hair or scratch on the neg. (normally using a drawn line to obliterate) & I use a stippling/clicking pattern rather than a drawn line the frequency or chance of a free running line is reduced - not eliminated, but reduced