Random hover=select behavior on my Dell laptop

[steveg144]

I am running XP Home Edition on my Dell Inspiron B130 laptop.
Yesterday I foolishly set my laptop down on a flat surface and ran to
get the phone. When I came back, my cat, apparently liking the heat,
had gone to sleep on my keyboard. Ever since, a weird thing has
happened: randomly (but often), my computer behaves as if hovering the
mouse over a certain thing is equivalent to single-clicking it! And
other times -- not. So if I'm in a browser window and I move my mouse
to the vertical scrollbar area below the slider, it "thinks" that I
single-clicked and it scrolls the browser window down. If I hold it
over any of my taskbar buttons, it acts as if I'd single-clicked the
icon and it fires up that app If I am in Word and move my mouse across
an area, it behaves as if I had "swiped" an area with the mouse button
held down (in other words, it selects a block of text). Now, I do not
believe this is some sort of setting, because it's so random. A
couple of minutes ago I accidentally hovered over the RealPlayer on
my taskbar and it started up RealPlayer. Just now I hovered over it to
duplicate the behavior, and nothing wrong happens. I did not have
TweakUI installed when this started so I know it wasn't any weird
TweeakUI setting that got twiddled by accident. I downloaded it last
night since I remembered that it allowed "hover to select" behavior,
I figured I could turn it off from TweakUI, but that had no effect.
So it's either a random XP glitch, or it's a hardware glitch. I want
to eliminate XP as the culprit before I drag it to the computer repair
shop. Thanks in advance for any ideas.

 

[Guest]

I am running XP Home Edition on my Dell Inspiron B130 laptop.
Yesterday I foolishly set my laptop down on a flat surface and ran to
get the phone. When I came back, my cat, apparently liking the heat,
had gone to sleep on my keyboard. Ever since, a weird thing has
happened: randomly (but often), my computer behaves as if hovering the
mouse over a certain thing is equivalent to single-clicking it! And
other times -- not. So if I'm in a browser window and I move my mouse
to the vertical scrollbar area below the slider, it "thinks" that I
single-clicked and it scrolls the browser window down. If I hold it
over any of my taskbar buttons, it acts as if I'd single-clicked the
icon and it fires up that app If I am in Word and move my mouse across
an area, it behaves as if I had "swiped" an area with the mouse button
held down (in other words, it selects a block of text). Now, I do not
believe this is some sort of setting, because it's so random. A
couple of minutes ago I accidentally hovered over the RealPlayer on
my taskbar and it started up RealPlayer. Just now I hovered over it to
duplicate the behavior, and nothing wrong happens. I did not have
TweakUI installed when this started so I know it wasn't any weird
TweeakUI setting that got twiddled by accident. I downloaded it last
night since I remembered that it allowed "hover to select" behavior,
I figured I could turn it off from TweakUI, but that had no effect.
So it's either a random XP glitch, or it's a hardware glitch. I want
to eliminate XP as the culprit before I drag it to the computer repair
shop. Thanks in advance for any ideas.

Naughty cat, playing Cat & Mouse? LOL.
Try to perform System Restore before the cat nap on the Keyboard/Touchpad
and see if that will bring you to shape.
Or you can click Start >> Control panel >> Printer and Other Hardware>>
Double click the Mouse icon and make sure the settings there are correct for
ex:
On the Mouse Properties :
Buttons | Pointers | Pointer Options | Wheel | Hardware | Device Settings.

Under Buttons tab make sure the right device is selected and the settings
there are correct.
Or you can click on the Reset Devices under the Device settings if you have
this option.
HTH.
nass

 

[Cooler Dude]

I am running XP Home Edition on my Dell Inspiron B130 laptop.
Yesterday I foolishly set my laptop down on a flat surface and
ran to get the phone. When I came back, my cat, apparently
liking the heat, had gone to sleep on my keyboard. Ever since,
a weird thing has happened: randomly (but often), my computer
behaves as if hovering the mouse over a certain thing is
equivalent to single-clicking it! And other times -- not. So if
I'm in a browser window and I move my mouse to the vertical
scrollbar area below the slider, it "thinks" that I
single-clicked and it scrolls the browser window down. If I
hold it over any of my taskbar buttons, it acts as if I'd
single-clicked the icon and it fires up that app If I am in
Word and move my mouse across an area, it behaves as if I had
"swiped" an area with the mouse button held down (in other
words, it selects a block of text). Now, I do not believe this
is some sort of setting, because it's so random. A couple of
minutes ago I accidentally hovered over the RealPlayer on my
taskbar and it started up RealPlayer. Just now I hovered over
it to duplicate the behavior, and nothing wrong happens. I did
not have TweakUI installed when this started so I know it
wasn't any weird TweeakUI setting that got twiddled by
accident. I downloaded it last night since I remembered that it
allowed "hover to select" behavior, I figured I could turn it
off from TweakUI, but that had no effect. So it's either a
random XP glitch, or it's a hardware glitch. I want to
eliminate XP as the culprit before I drag it to the computer
repair shop. Thanks in advance for any ideas.

To stop the mouse from selecting/launching when you haven't
clicked the mouse button:

If you have TweakUI installed, go to "Mouse" > "X-Mouse" and
disable it by unchecking the box(es).
If you don't have TweakUI, run the edit entitled "Enable or
Disable Active Window Tracking"
at line 171 on this site:
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm
Be sure to click on "Disable" !