Erratic scrolling

Question

I have been using an ApplePro keyboard and a Logitec wireless mouse with my iBook.
Everything was working fine for months up until a week ago and now I'm getting erratic behavior when I'm typing text --- either doing emails, TextEdit or Appleworks.
I'll be typing along and then hit the return key to come to the next line and suddenly the page is scrolling uncontrollably and my iBook is chattering like I'm typing 80 words a minute. What's going on ? I only stops when I unplug the keyboard.
The dongle for my Logitec mouse if plugged into either my iBook or the keyboard and the keyboard is always plugged into the iBook of course. It seems to do the same behavior no matter where the mouse dongle is plugged into.
I can't find any information on what may be causing this.
I put new batteries in the mouse thinking that it may be the cause but it's doing the same thing. This is the first problem I've ever had with my iBook.
14 iBook G4 768MB; 20G iPod   Mac OS X (10.3.9)  
14 iBook G4 768MB; 20G iPod   Mac OS X (10.3.9)  

Answer 1

That's an odd situation, and short of the general cure-all suggestion of
archiving your entire stuff to an external Firewire hard drive (clone the
entire computer to a partition; use a clone utility such as Carbon Copy)
and then use a booted Disk Utility from the OSX installer disc #1 and
go ahead and start over from a very blank slate. Use the disk utility
option to "zero-data" and then reformat drive to HFS+; and install it all.
[You'd clone the system from the external to get it reinstalled.]
Of course, there may be something as simple as the need to do the
basic routine maintenance and 'repair disk permissions.' Or, boot from
the OSX installer disc #1 and use Disk Utility to repair disk and also
to repair disk permissions; then boot from the hard drive. Could be the
machine is just a little confused, and depending on how long it has been
running OSX 10.3.9, it may just need some maintenance; I occasionally
use OnyX (Panther version is available, free download, from Titanium
Software online) in its Automated mode to run scheduled maintenance
and clear caches; and the other stuff you can check-box to run in there.
Another item to check is in System Preferences. With a portable computer
you may have settings accidentally set in one of several places; one place to
check may be in the "Universal Access> Keyboard> " and see if one of those
options is turned on which may make your keystrokes audible and also could
be messing up your efforts. Another may be to see if your touchpad control
is set to ignore input while you use the keyboard.
That is an odd issue, and there may be other things to check; if all the
maintenance is done routinely and before/after software installs and
system updates, you may also consider carefully looking into .plist
or preferences specific to keyboard. But I'd hope it didn't come to that.
The computer works fine without the external keyboard and mouse?
Have you tried any other Apple keyboard and mouse, too?
Best of luck.