Jumping cursor on touchpad notebooks. A software problem?

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Nolabywater

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Topic # 14707 17-Jul-2007 04:45

I am a writer by profession so spend 12-14 hour days typing into a wordprocessing program and sending emails. Over nad over again with touchpad laptops, I have experienced the same problem. Can be in the middle of tying a sentence and my cursor jumps four or five lines earlier and starts inserting words at that spot. So I am constantly retyping and fixing. I never have this problem on a standalone. I am not hitting the touchpad when this happens on my laptop. No matter how careful I am about hitting keys, the cursor will arbitrarily move to an earlier position. This happens in all programs with text so is not related to a specific "Word" probelm.

Any ideas? I am tearing my hair out over this one.

Thanks.

Nola

sbiddle

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Reply # 78382 17-Jul-2007 06:45

What Operating System and brand of laptop do you have? I've experienced the same issue with XP running on older Dell Latitude laptops and have never come across a fix for it!

Reon

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Reply # 78401 17-Jul-2007 09:35

I've had a couple of users with similar complaints but their issue was that when typing they would brush the touchpad with the bottom of their hand when typing.

It would be interesting if you tried disabling the touchpad completely and seeing if it still happened, but make sue you have a usb mouse you can connect or know how to enable it with the keyboard before you do it.

Cheers
Reon

Nolabywater

3 posts

Wannabe Geek

Reply # 78415 17-Jul-2007 10:14

I found a patch that works. Just after I posted this!

http://www.download.com/TouchFreeze/3000-2094_4-10395987.html.

I am an expert typist and never brush the touch pad. But this freezes the touch pad while you are typing text. My best guess is that the vibration of the keys is actually affecting the touchpad when one is typing text. Anyway friends have already downloaded this and we've all gotten releif. Hallelujah!!!

Nola

nakedmolerat

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Reply # 78920 20-Jul-2007 09:03

mostly likely u touch it. i never heard of any software problem. but it may happen in word if your computer is infected with virus

tonyhughes

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Reply # 78925 20-Jul-2007 09:31

I have a dual boot compaq V5000 laptop. This issue happens all the time in Vista, and never in XP....

I will try the link that was just posted...

Nolabywater

3 posts

Wannabe Geek

Reply # 78928 20-Jul-2007 09:42

Promise, I actually don't touch the touch pad when I type ever. This happens even if I type slowly, letter by letter. I believe the vibration affects the touchpad. The reason the patch worked is because it locks the touch pad when you are typing text and it frees the touch pad the second you touch it. As I said I have had several friends download it in the last two days and all have experienced relief. The jumping cursor problem is very, very widespread among lap top users.

I appreciate very must everyone weighing in to help!!

Nola!!