Help! Mouse"clicks" randomly!

[chansen]

I'm having a terrible time typing this on my Dell Inspiron 8000 notebook (Windows 2000). The problem is that the pointer acts like it was just clicked (repositioning the cursor) or double-clicked (selecting a word or section of text), even when I'm only typing and nowhere near the usb mouse or built-in buttons. This is usually in conjunction with hard drive activity.

When this happens in the middle of typing, it often results in large sections of text being lost.

I fixed it before by tweaking the memory of the laptop. Now it's back again.

What's going on here?

Thanks,
Craig

 

[mindiris]

Pretty bizzare. No clue. Try a virus scan after running "chkdisk x: /f", where x: represents each of your partitions. You'd probably need to restart your computer/notebook to get it start checking.

Then try new mouse drivers, like Logitech's.

 

[TunaBoo]

Do you have a glide pad? Maybe you are bumping it with your hand?

 

[chansen]

Tuna,

Nope, nothing but the keyboard.

mindiris,

Didn't run the chkdisk, but installed new mouse and touchpad drivers, to no avail. Running Win2K w/192MB and 90MB free. Only other problem is that I'm down to 1GB free disk space, and when I ran defrag, it said that it wanted more space for a defrag (23% of the 5GB disk was free, but it could only use 11%, and it wants 15%).

Any ideas?

Regards,
Craig

 

[Conroy9]

if you are holding your hand over the inspiron's mouse touchpad to type, and you ever drop your wrist down on it, it will think you clicked. it's a "feature" that lets you use the touchpad without having to use the buttons

i don't know if this is what you're doing, but i had the most annoying time with my laptop until i realized what was happening because someone was actually using that feature on my laptop

 

[chansen]

Again, no. I am a good two inches away from the touchpad, pointer stick, and any buttons except the actual keyboard. When this is happening, there are clicks every 0.5-10 seconds. Some obviously register as double-clicks.

Regards,
Craig

 

[Citadel535]

I agree with mindiris something that weird may mean taht there is a virus on your system.

 

[chansen]

Well, I am running the latest Norton AV and it's updated, so I'll update again and give it a complete scan when it comes home with my wife tonight. Still, I don't think that's it. Have I been wrong before...

Regards,
Craig

 

[Mutilator]

Have you tried a PS2 port mouse instead of a USB mouse? I know with my Inspiron 7500 doing that disabled the touchpad/buttons completly so that would rule out a malfunctioning touchpad...

 

[chansen]

Well, when this happened before, I was using a PS/2 mouse. Again, I'll add it to my list of things to try later.

It seems to be connected to hard drive accesses. There's a small "blip" on the hd every time.

 

[Conroy9]

i assume you've emailed dell tech support

what do you mean by "tweaking the memory" to fix it last time?

 

[chansen]

Win2K memory tweaks here.

Dell won't help because I replaced the provided WinME o/s with Win2K. I was hoping that someone had heard of this problem.

If all else fails, I'll reinstall WinME and see if that works.

Regards,
Craig

 

[andalas]

I thought they fixed those problem with their new bios.
I don't really know why it's happening, but I don't
have those problem on my Inspiron 8000.
They have a KB on their support page about the problem
that you're having.

I broke the damn keyboard though because a binder fell on top of it
and they want to charge me $200 + parts for replacement.
What a rip off?.

 

[Kill_Phil]

The Cleaner might be worth a try, finds trojans and kills em!

 

[chansen]

You know, andalas, I think you're right. I wasn't thinking of a BIOS problem.

I'll let you guy know late tonight or tomorrow who was right.

Thank you all for your input.

Regards,
Craig