$%^&ing-well hate my laptop!
 

Okay.....that was perhaps just a little extreme, but it's really starting wind me up now.

I start typing and everythings just pukka, my eyes drift down to the keyboard and when I look up again, the cursor and therefore the letters i am typing have jumped from where they're supposed to be and are now typing in the middle of one of the previous lines. Often this happens midword. Sometimes it just jumps back a little on the same line.....some times, I think I am still typing and actually the cursor has moved off the text box entirely, theres a sudden couple of clicks as I press enter, thinking I am jumping down a line and bang! I've just gone two or three pages and the post i've been working on has been lost. No amount of using the back and forward buttons can retrieve it, I have effectively deleted the whole thing.

Similar stuff happens when writing emails, or even when just typing a letter, story or poem in Word. I have to check everything five hundred $%^&ing times just to make sure there isn't some bizarre merging of words, or half a sentence inserted in between the first and second half of the word 'yesterday' or somesuch.

I don't know why it does this, I have tried to figure it out. I have studiously typed slowly and watched the keys I am pressing but somehow, I still find the cursor jumps to somewhere else, and I am at a loss as to what I have pressed to make it do that.

I really need to fix my desktop computer. It is so much better than this hunk of junk (yes I know, the problem I described is an operational one and nothing to do with the quality of the machine, but trust me, it's local authority issue therefore it's age can be roughly equated with that of Noah's boat.) I miss my proper computer.

I'm guessing you have a touchpad on your laptop and you are touching it with one of your thumbs as you type. Touching or tapping the touchpad causes a mouseclick in most models and that is repositioning the cursor.

Just a guess.

I know precious little about computers but I assume you've tried to defragment your hard drive, allot more RAM to the program, wipe out your preference folder if it's a Mac. After that, I usually throw myself upon the mercy of the cellar's combined awesomely majestic computer wisdom.

*Bows in proper wayne and garth fashion* I am not worthy, etc. repeat as needed.

Yeah, I thought that, but even when I was being really really careful not to, it still happened. I'm bemused.

See? Dar512 beat me to it.

3f, my desktop computer got fragged by a bunch of spyware programmes. Now all I get is big fat warnings. The virus software can't seem to get rid of it. I have saved my documents now I just need to get around to wping it and reinstalling windows.

That is why I love computers. They really save us so much time...

Combined Cellar Awesomely Majestic Computer Wisdom:

If you must run Windows, don't run IE. At all. Firefox is your friend.

Don't install software that might have adware/spyware in it. Even if it's free.

Don't click on cute stuff your friends send you. Especially in IMs.

Don't use Outlook. At all. Thunderbird is your friend.

Avoid HTML formatted email. Even if it's prettier.

Combined Cellar Awesomely Majestic Computer Wisdom (con't):

Use extreme caution restoring your documents; some of them may be virus infected.

Good advice Maggie)

I wonder if what you're seeing might be the action of a badly-written or defective keylogger? This is a piece of spyware that records what you type and saves it to send of to someone else in the hope you've typed some account numbers or passwords that will be useful to a criminal somewhere.

Hmm....possible. But it's done it from day one of getting the laptop, even before I took it online. It was wiped and everything installed from scratch before they assigned it to me.

Oh. Hmmm. Possibly loose internal electrical connections to the keyboard. Weak springs under the arrow keys. A remote possibility of loose debris stuck under the keys, although that usually results in missing keystrokes rather than extra ones.

- If you connect to the net whatsoever, you must completely and constantly update whatever OS you are running, Win, OSX, or Linux with the vendor's patch system, and never run an OS that is unsupported.

- If you don't know *exactly* what it is, you can't click on it at all. This not only includes things in your browser, but also email (obviously), and, really, everything in almost every application, including and especially things on your desktop.

- If it promises to fix your system, and you click on it, just give up and reformat your hard drive.

Also good advice: ) Thanks

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

I have one of these.

I used to work for a company that had some old 'stinkpads.' Despite the moniker, the things were six years old and still plugging away. They were almost impossible to break, until the mobo fried.