Mouse has mind of it's own - replaced mouse, reloaded system, same

[Guest]

I have an IBM/Lenovo T43 Notebook, worked fine for first 1+ years that I had
it. In the last few months it's decided to have a mind of it's own regarding
the mouse. Primarily the problem is experienced when I'm clicking on text and
moving the mouse over the text to select it while holding the mouse button
down.

Sometimes the mouse will just jump halfway across the page, sometimes it
just deselects what I was trying to select, sometimes it copy and pastes the
text elsewhere while I'm still holding the button down having pressed nothing
else.

It's finally driving me nutts. I've reloaded the system and replaced the
mouse. In addition to reloading the system when it KEPT DOING IT after that I
wanted to write zero's to the drive to ensure nothing was being left behind
so to speak but I don't have time to wait for 48 hours for a zero write and
confirmation so I just bought a new hard drive, installed a fresh copy of
Windows XP Pro, Office and drivers and replaced the mouse AGAIN...

SAME THING!

I'm starting to lose it here. My wife has a Dell D600 and she keeps
complaining about her keyboard doing wierd things like this too - not sure,
is our house possesed?

(just did it again while trying to edit something in this post).

FYI, I have been a computer tech and systems admin for 10 years, no longer
doing that, but just FYI as I've tried all the obvious stuff.

 

[Elmo]

I have an IBM/Lenovo T43 Notebook, worked fine for first 1+ years that I had
it. In the last few months it's decided to have a mind of its own regarding
the mouse. Primarily the problem is experienced when I'm clicking on text and
moving the mouse over the text to select it while holding the mouse button
down.

Sometimes the mouse will just jump halfway across the page, sometimes it
just deselects what I was trying to select, sometimes it copy and pastes the
text elsewhere while I'm still holding the button down having pressed nothing
else.

It's finally driving me nuts. I've reloaded the system and replaced the
mouse. In addition to reloading the system when it KEPT DOING IT after that I
wanted to write zero's to the drive to ensure nothing was being left behind
so to speak but I don't have time to wait for 48 hours for a zero write and
confirmation so I just bought a new hard drive, installed a fresh copy of
Windows XP Pro, Office and drivers and replaced the mouse AGAIN...

SAME THING!

I'm starting to lose it here. My wife has a Dell D600 and she keeps
complaining about her keyboard doing weird things like this too - not sure,
is our house possessed?

(Just did it again while trying to edit something in this post).

FYI, I have been a computer tech and systems admin for 10 years, no longer
doing that, but just FYI as I've tried all the obvious stuff.

It's possibly the touchpad sensitivity.. any bounce caused by
keystrokes, or a shirtsleeve touching the touchpad moves the pointer.

 

[Guest]

It's docked on the desk, lid closed, so that's not the problem. Plus, I've
tried disabling the onboard mice (touch and stick) and still have the same
problem

 

[Dell_C.A.]

Hello,

My name is Mike, I’m a Technical Analyst located at Dell corporate
headquarters in Round Rock, TX. I’m part of an internet outreach team
developed to interact with the online community regarding technical
questions and issues that customers face with Dell products. I read
your question and although I’m not an expert with Lonovo systems I have
seen this issue before.

With everything you’ve done so far I would look at software or drivers
as a possible cause of the problem. Try booting the machine in safe
mode, F8 at the startup screen, and see if the problem exists in there.
If not, I would say it’s a driver issue and you should look at the
IBM/Lonovo support site for either the latest driver or possibly a
driver that’s one or two versions old (some new drivers cause
compatibility problems with 3rd party software.) If it happens in safe
mode as well then you should probably start looking at an actual
hardware failure (internal hardware, not the mouse.) If it was doing
this right after the fresh OS install then the driver or internal
hardware will more then likely be the culprit.

You can also click on Start and then Run and type in msconfig. When the
configuration utility opens click on the Startup tab and clear all of
the boxes, then apply and hit OK. Restart the machine and see if the
problem persists. (This will keep your internet security from loading
so make sure you are disconnected from the internet before trying
this.) If the problem doesn’t occur here then the problem is one of the
startup programs in that menu. Turn them back on one by one (using the
same instructions to turn them off, only put a check in the tic box to
turn the item back on) and see which one causes the failure. This is
time consuming, but if it works it will be well worth it.

I hope this information is helpful. Good luck!

Mike
Dell customer advocate