[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

To add to the discussion, yesterday my husband started experiencing the
wandering mouse/cursor problem on his laptop. He could sit in front of the
computer not touching anything and watch the mouse pointer gradually drift
to the top left corner of the screen. I've occasionally seen this sort of
mouse drift, but I could always regain control by moving the mouse
explicitly; he could not. He was unable to control the mouse or insertion
point via the external mouse, touchpad, or "eraserhead" pointing device on
the laptop. When he was trying to type an important email, the cursor would
suddenly jump up a line or two, and he couldn't move it with the mouse.

He did everything he could think of, including shutting down completely and
rebooting (cold restart). Finally, in desperation, he removed the wireless
network adapter and unplugged the laptop (its battery no longer holds any
appreciable charge, so it has to be run from mains power). A few minutes
later, he plugged everything back in, and so far all seems copacetic.
Unfortunately, he isn't sure whether the problem was the mostly dead
battery, the network adapter, or something else, but it seems to be fixed
temporarily.

Given the agony and bewilderment he experienced over this for several hours,
I can understand the frustration of users who are told that the problem
derives from their touchpad when they are convinced that this is not the
case.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

"Graham Mayor" wrote in message
...
The simple fact is that some touchpads are so sensitive to taps (because
that is how they work) that even heavy fingered typists will activate the
tap function without actually touching the pad. This utility seems to be
worth investigating. If it is not compatible with Vista, I would not be
surprised if an update comes along soon.

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org


Soundchick wrote:
I love how everyone who has not experienced this problem is so quick
to say that it's just the user accidentally touching the touchpad. I
am an IT professional myself and I have had this problem on 3 laptops
now. Different brands, different OS, different touchpad drivers, etc.
I have gone as far as disabling the touchpad, but even then I have
the same problems (cursor jumping, windows closing, etc.) There seems
to be a flaw in the Windows OS when it comes to the touchpad. The
only thing I have found that has helped me is a little program called
TouchFreeze. You can download it for free from several places (just
do a Google search) but I'll post a link below. Since I downloaded
and installed it, I have not had the problem. I wish I had the time
to analyze the code to see what it is actually doing. The program is
supposed to simply disable the touchpad while one is typing. I wish
Microsoft would take a look at this and get a patch released to fix
it!

http://code.google.com/p/touchfreeze/


"Ferdinand" wrote:

Thank you Graham.
Another problem is that for no apparent reason, when i"m typing a
message it desapears or a window pops up asking if I want to quit.
Do you think it is a related problem?

"Graham Mayor" wrote:

It's the touch pad. Some are so sensitive that tapping the keys
will affect them.

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org


Ferdinand wrote:
I have the same problem, and I am keeping my hands away from the
touch pad and everything else except for the keys I want to press.
A computer science major said it was a Vista problem. I also took
it to a computer shop. The technician reinstalled Office but there
was little improvement.


"CPTGAWRY" wrote:

EVERYTIME I am typing a message or working on a letter in Word
2007, the cursor will jump to another sentence. Has anyone else
experienced this and what is the solution?