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Why does my laptop cursor not sit still?

K

kylef

Golden Member
I have an Omnibook 6000 running Windows 2000.

For some reason, about 50% of the time I'm using the laptop, the mouse cursor traverses the screen in a particular direction without any input on my part. No matter what I do with the touchpad or index pointer (the laptop has both), after I let up the cursor starts heading in the direction that it was before.

Right now as I type this, for instance, it's moving up and right at about 10 pixels/sec.

Obviously, once it gets to one of the 4 corners of the screen, it can't go any further. But this is really annoying, because it's nearly impossible to click on links in my web browser because the mouse is constantly trying to move while I'm trying to move it myself!

Does anyone know what's going on? I can usually stop it from happening by rebooting the laptop, but that's ridiculous in my opinion. Sometimes THAT doesn't even work: when the laptop restarts, the cursor is moving again, but in a different direction!

Any help would be much appreciated!
 
Its the the index pointer. Its been an issue on IBM thinkpads since the first version and is probably an issue on you HP as well. I dont recall if there is a fix but maybe there is a sensitivity setting or something like that.
 
Is it one of those eraser tip mouse stubby trackpoint things? If so, this is a common thing. Make sure you have the correct drivers for it installed. Most of the drivers will detect this drifting and stop it after it moves a half-inch or so.
 
The index pointer has some unwanted bias due to dirt, mishandling, damage or whatever. I think that somewhere in the software there is a deadzone setting just like for your gaming joystick that you can adjust to eliminate this.
 
Cool! Thanks guys!

This thing has both a trackpad AND a pointing stick. So I went down to the driver and upped the "touch sensitivity" on the pointing stick to "heavy touch" and it has stopped moving!

For some reason I thought it was the touchpad that was causing it, but now I know otherwise! Awesome, this is MUCH, MUCH better!

Thanks again!

Kyle
 


<< The index pointer has some unwanted bias due to dirt, mishandling, damage or whatever. I think that somewhere in the software there is a deadzone setting just like for your gaming joystick that you can adjust to eliminate this. >>



Actually, for my Toshiba notebook, I read that the reason that the eraserheads do this is because they constantly recalibrate themselves during use.

Tech bulletin here
 
I;ve had that happen since my old Toshibas. All the IBM Thinkpads and OmniBook 6000 do this. My solution, do something that causes HDD activity (open a website, open Windows exploers, etc). The second you click, let go of the mouse. After the activity stops, so will the drifting.

I notice it usually happen when you are moving your mouse and heavy system activity occurs.

Windogg
 
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