So, I start the game, all is well. But when creating a character, as soon as I open it up it just fills the box up with 7's. After a few times I just accepted that my name would be 7777777777777 and moved on.

But when the game starts, it just scrolls over to the left. If I put the cursor to the right, I can get it to go back over, but as soon as I move away from the right side of the screen, it shoots back to the left.

I tried restarting, running as admin, and running in Windows XP compat. mode. I'm using Windows 8. Solutions?

I've had trouble with random numbers and letters filling the blanks. The way I was able to fix it was to hit the letter/number. In your case 7. This then allowed backspace to clear the slot was cleard. Don't know if it will work with you, but it was how I got a work around.

Oh, so bummed. That did not work. I found however that when I alt+tabbed and came back, it would allow me to backspace for a moment. Doing it a few times, I was able to name my character.

The scrolling continued.

Then I went and tried Baldur's Gate 2...same problem :(

Am I out $20 now? Does anyone know what's going on here?

I recall seeing this problem reported before some time back, but can't find the thread and can't recall the solution offhand, but...

something makes me think it has to do with your mouse's software. If you have a Logitech mouse (or even if you don't), try disabling the extra mouse software (SetPoint, etc.) See if that helps at all.

Don't despair just yet, you didn't waste the money. :)

I had the same problem at first, happened only for a couple of times and never since.
To be honest I don't know what the fix was, I just banged on the arrows and numpad (with a quick pass on the rest of the keyboard for good measure) for a little while and it stopped. Alt-Tab or Alt-F4 and restart has been mentioned as well.

Even if you google that, all you get is "NVM it fixed itself". Sorry if I can't be of more help.

Have you tried rebooting your computer?

This is a not-too-uncommon driver issue (keyboard/mouse/whatever), and as olnorton suggests, a reboot will almost always cure it.