Mouse drifting on screen on it's on

[Bill Tisdale]

Yesterday my mouse pointer started drifting on it's own
across my desktop. Sometimes it was faster than others.
I have a Dell laptop inspiron 4000 and have computer with
external mouse and mouse pad. The external mouse stopped
working but I have a small amount of control of the mouse
pad when it is drifting slowly. Dell tech support went
through all their checks and finally suggested I reload
windows XP. I did a reinstall repair and after it kept
drifting I started backing up for a full format install
and amazingly it stopped drifting right before I
formatted. With my old copy of xp I went up on the web
for updates and after the critical service pack 1
installed the mouse is drifting again! Any ideas on what
I need to do? I believe my hardware is fine.

 

[Jim Adams]

Have you tried loading the Synaptics touchpad driver from Dell? Also you may
have an option in your bios to disable the touchpad/joystick and use ps2
mouse only. May help to isolate the problem.

 

[Bill Tisdale]

Thanks for the information. I did load the newest
touchpad driver from Dell with their technical help...in
fact we tried everything that was on their check sheet.
Their final suggestion was to reinstall windows in the
repair mode which did not help. Their next move was to
do a reformat and load xp from scratch. My mouse has been
working fine untill a few days ago. The drifting gets
better and worst...when I have the problem the ps2 mouse
will not work at all I do have some control with the
touch pad. Any more suggestions?

Thanks
Bill