Holding Shift Key selects text...

I was having the same problem too (extremely annoying!) and someone in this forum suggested that you change the Pointing Stick's "Tap to select" to OFF.
It worked!. No more erratic behavior when selecting SHIFT or CTRL.

Apparently there is a problem with the pointing stick and shift and ctrl keys being crossed somehow.

I8000
PIII 1000mhz
384 RAM
20GB HD
nVideo GeForce2 32MB
22.50 nVidia drivers from 3dchipset.com
ActionTec MiniPCI Combo
DVD
APR
Archos Jukebox 20gb, Castlewood Orb
WinXP, Office2k Developer, VStudio 6.0, Norton AV 2k2, Diskeeper 7.
- No problems whatsoever -

This problem has been driving me crazy. I thought it was related to the touch pad at first, so I disabled that (unchecked "Tap to Click" on the Touch tab of the mouse properties). No dice. If I hold the shift key down (necessary when playing Total Annihilation, or starting sentences) I will occasionally get phantom mouse clicks.

Is there some extra setting for turning off the mouse stick's tap to click? It's still enabled (I can tap it and get a mouse click) and I can't find a way to turn it off. I never use the mouse stick, and if it is causing these phantom mouse clicks then I'd like to rip it out.

So - how do you disable the "Tap to Select" for the mouse stick?

Note to Dell: when searching the Internet for references to this problem I found that people have been having these phantom clicks on Dell laptops for *years*. Please fix this permanently - it ruins an otherwise fine machine.

To disable the "Press to Select" function for the Pointing Stick you have to select the Pointing Stick on PS/2 Port from the pull down menu at the top of the Mouse Properties dialog. This is under the Touch Tab.

By default the Synaptics TouchPad will be selected but when you select the Pointing Stick the options change giving you the Press to Select Options for the Pointing Stick.

By the way eventhough I've had this option selected it has never worked on my Pointing Stick! Don't know why and since I never had that option on my last Toshiba I don't really miss it.

HTH,

Jonathan.

Rtn. Jonathan R. Portwood.
________________________________________
Inspiron 8100
PIII-M @ 933Mhz
256Mb RAM
20Gb Ultra-ATA 100 HDD
Toshiba SDR2102 DVD/CDRW Combo Optical Drive (8*8*24)
nVidia GeForce2Go with 32Mb DDR RAM
15" SXGA+ Display (1400*1050)
Win 2K Pro SP2
________________________________________

"Tap to Click" is for the touchpad. "Press to Select" is for the Pointer.
Using the 6.0.18 drivers from either Synaptics or Dell
Control Panel -> Mouse -> Advanced Features -> Pointing Stick -> Settings -> Press to select -> Enabled Press to Select.

This will certainly solve your problem.


I8000
PIII 1000mhz
384 RAM
20GB HD
nVideo GeForce2 32MB
22.50 nVidia drivers from 3dchipset.com
ActionTec MiniPCI Combo
DVD
APR
Archos Jukebox 20gb, Castlewood Orb
WinXP, Office2k Developer, VStudio 6.0, Norton AV 2k2, Diskeeper 7.
- No problems whatsoever -

Cool - that works.

Thanks a huge amount. This has been annoying me for months, and I couldn't figure out what the problem was. It's all good now. Your directions were clear and accurate.

Thank you for this post!  I was going crazy - every time I held the shift key for more than a second, my computer would select whatever was under the pointer.  I was accidentally selecting and deleting entire paragraphs.  Whenever I wanted to select a large number of files, my computer would make copies of the files instead of selecting them.

I followed your instructions and the problem's gone!  Thank you!