cursor uncontrollable

Question

My Inspiron 8200 has developed a cursor control problem. Disconnecting the mouse does not correct the problem. The cursor "flys" to the extreme upper right of the screen and stays there. The green "stick" in the middle of the keypad can be used to bring the cursor back down, but release the stick and the cursor flys back the far upper right corner.

Earlier forum messages report a similar problem, and prompted suggestions to go to the control panel, locate pointers and other hardware, then click on mouse. Then click on the device tab and disable the pointer stick. Sounds like good advice, but when I search the control panel, I can't locate anything specifically mentioning the pointer stick.

Am running XP.

Any suggestions?

jocase · Answer

Is your control panel set so that icons show on a white background? Check that 'view' is st to icons and is classic view.

rwm32 · Answer

On my 8100, I occasionally have a similar problem, with the mouse pointer moving apparently of its own accord. To fix it, I remove the cover (in my case, lilac, not green...) from the mouse stick and blow air round the base of the stick while rotating the stick itself (OK, it's a minute movement, but it's still important) to clear out the speck of dust which is preventing the stick from sitting in its 'home' position.

I have not yet managed to find a way of disabling the stick without disabling the trackpad too. If you don't need either stick or trackpad, no problem: disable them in the BIOS.

Hope this makes sense / helps.

rlbpatent · Answer

RLB1000, I'm having the same exact problem. I've gone through the suggestions to disable the trackstick and the touch pad and can't find either in the control panel or mouse category or device manager. Some of this stuff has to be hidden. I'm going to keep looking for this stuff.

RLB1000 · Answer

I did try blowing air on the mouse stick (with the purple cover pad removed), while moving the stick around. This never helped. My only solution then was to disable both the mouse stick and the touchpad (they're unfortunately linked together) within the BIOS.

rlbpatent · Answer

RLB1000, thanks for your input.  I'll give that a try.

RLB1000 · Answer

I had no other option except to disable the mouse stick/touchpad in the BIOS. To do that, power off the computer. Then power it back on, and during boot up hit F2. Then follow the instructions you find there and step down through the first couple of pages until you see the touchpad enable yes/no line. Change it to no and follow the instructions to exit. Then reboot. No more mouse stick or touchpad control, but at least my external mouse now works without problem.

McBraille · Answer

Hello,   Since 2 day's ago, my Dell Latitude C840 had simmilar problems. When the pc was started up i could use it maybe for some minutes but then it started move on it's own.   First i checked if it was the external mouse...this was not the case. Then i looked if there was a virus...this was not the case. Then i went to the control panel to see if there was something strange there...not that i could see. I went to the internet and searched for an answer in many forums...alway's seems to be just not exactly your case hehe. BUT here i did what RLB1000 is proposing. I went to the BIOS and disabled the mousepad and stick and rebooted. It works fine now.   So also my thanks RLB1000!!;)

McBraille · Answer

Hello,   Since 2 day's ago, my Dell Latitude C840 had simmilar problems. When the pc was started up i could use it maybe for some minutes but then it started move on it's own.   First i checked if it was the external mouse...this was not the case. Then i looked if there was a virus...this was not the case. Then i went to the control panel to see if there was something strange there...not that i could see. I went to the internet and searched for an answer in many forums...alway's seems to be just not exactly your case hehe. BUT here i did what RLB1000 is proposing. I went to the BIOS and disabled the mousepad and stick and rebooted. It works fine now.   So also my thanks RLB1000!!;)

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cursor uncontrollable

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