i'TS your touchpad.

I hate tbeastlie things. Turn it off, plug in a proper mouse/trackball.

Agree Jay. I have had several laptops with touchpads and always had the same problem with the curser jumping around and messing up my writing. So...I use a normal keyboard and mouse at home and have a small portable/foldup set that I take with me when I'm traveling. Problem solved!

Never had a bit of trouble with a touchpad. But then my thumbs are over the spacebar where they belong when typing.

There's always one of those Keyboard Clits....I mean..."force-sensitive keyboard pointing devices", I suppose.

What kind of laptop is it?
 

Dana,

What kind of laptop is it?

Is it a Dell or HP?

If so, they use Synaptics touchpads. You can download the software from www.synaptics.com at:

http://www.synaptics.com/support/drive.cfm

The Synaptics driver has better support than the OEM drivers that Dell or HP have.

If it's a ThinkPad, you may want to update the drivers from the Lenovo support site (the name escapes me now).

However, the Microsoft drivers for mice are really bad when used with touchpads. The Synaptics ones make your life much easier.

Thanks,

Mitch

It's a Toshiba. I think you guys might be right about it being the touchpad.

Out of interest, what is a 'thinkpad'?

A brand of laptop, originally made by IBM but since sold to the Chinese company Lenovo. They originated a bunch of interesting engineering ideas, including the "trackpoint" force sensitive pointing device and the "butterfly" folding keyboard.

The "Thinkpad" name actually came from a marketing premium IBM salesmen used to give away; a cousin to the "THINK" sign, it was a small shirt-pocket sized notebook emblazoned with the "THINK" slogan.

http://blogs.sun.com/roller/resources/dcb/ThinkPad.jpg

http://logogear.americanid.com/image.../200051680.jpg

I think Toshibas also use the Synaptics touchpads :)

It sounds like touchpad but could also be a clicker problem too. I've clicked with the left button on my notebook so much it got messed up. So I'd be typing along and it would decide to click for me >_< Did exactly what you describe Dana. So it's probably that button getting stuck / touchy. The only other things I can think of is that you're touching the touchpad (I think you'd know if you were) or that the Synaptics drivers have gotten ültra-sensitive. I'm betting button.

ahh...the click thing sounds likely. Thanks for that

Synaptics and Thinkpad Drivers
 

The Synaptics and Thinkpad drivers correct for "interference".

The Microsoft OEM drivers do not.

I've had the same type of issues, but the Synaptics OEM drivers corrected the interference issues.

They also enable lots of features the OEMs "leave out", or in the case of Toshiba, bundle with their own crap which is hard to use or understand.

Thanks,

Mitch

What is considered interference?

Looking at it, breathing, the rotation of the Earth...

Solar flares!

Don't use Windows at all.
Download Ubuntu or SuSE or RedHat's deskop (whatever it's called now) and give it whirl. Especially if you're going to reinstall Windows anyway. Ubuntu in particular is faster to set up and potentially less problematic, once you figure out the basics (which aren't that hard).
More on topic:
Put a piece of sticky note paper over the touchpad. It'll still work if you press down on the paper, but will cut down on the random movement.

Not everyone can use Linux....
 

Headsplice,

The machine here in question is a corporate laptop.

While I like Linux as much as anyone else, and am running Ubuntu on one of my machines at home, along with XP and OS X, this doesn't fix the problem.

The problem is that vendors (especially HP, Dell and Toshiba) ship crap drivers for the Synaptics touchpads. I have multiple customers who must run Windows that have utilized the OEM Synaptics drivers to great benefit on their systems.

No Linux distribution I know of has drivers, or the utilities, which can configure those trackpads to have the feature the Windows drivers provide, which is PalmCheck. That's the interference control. Yes, I know about the Open Source drivers :).

I found out about these drivers from a customer who is almost completely non-technical who insisted on having them on his new Dell laptop a few years back, because his Compaq laptop had them too.

I've got multiple customers who are completely non-technical utilizing this solution, and they don't call me with touchpad problems.

Thanks,

Mitch