Most of the time, the game play is very reactive and smooth, but once in a while, mouse input is interrupted so I can't turn or look up or down with the mouse. Keyboard input is sometimes completely interrupted, but will sometimes work. Total time for interruption is about 5 seconds at max. If I haven't been blown away, play usually resumes smoothly as if nothing happened.

The event sometimes seems to be linked to crossing or paralleling an edge, though not always. It's not related to CPU overload as I can usually move normally in crowded rooms and bot activity proceeds normally while I'm frozen. (Bots, explosions, missiles, keyboard moves)

2GZ Pentium M Dell Lattitude D810 Laptop
1GB Ram
Plenty of disk space available
Windows XP (completely new load Thanksgiving)
Nexuiz 2.3 (also new load at Thanksgiving)
Logitech Trackman Wheel
Logitech SetPoint 4.00.121

Any ideas on how to avoid this disruption?

First thing would be to try the alternate build -- nexuiz-sdl.exe I think, rather than the general nexuiz.exe.

Anything hoggish running in the background?

I'll try the other build this weekend. I always kill as many background services and programs when playing shooters, so there's nothing unusual running.

I'm pretty sure it's some sort of control problem rather than a processor overload, since the other activities (bot movement, firing, and sounds) going on around me happen at normal pace. This usually means I get stuck in a corner and get toasted or drop into a hazard with no chance of quick escape.

Thanks!

Try some different video drivers.

I'd suggest you to decrease the count of bots nevertheless. Your CPU certainly isn't that weak, but I get lags like you do even with stronger ones when playing locally.

Bear in mind that at local matches, your Laptop is kinda like server and client at the same time.

you can try this , dunno if it will work . it gives me a superb mouse controlle

If mouse movement is jerky but framerate is high, try typing "gl_finish 1" (without quotes) into the console (makes cpu wait for gpu before ending frame, which gives lousy input drivers a chance to catch up).

or mabye your disk is your bottleneck , virusscanner etc .