Think I have cracked it.

Disabled the tapping on the nub completely under the touch pad properties and have had no problems since.

Where did you find this? I have a C840 and can find no properties for the touchpad at all! I am suffering from the same problem and it is driving me crazy!

I  have looked under the mouse properties where the manual says that there should be a touchpad tab, but there is nothing there.

On my system it sits in the bottom of the taskbar near where the clock is.

it should be under control panel, then mouse. It normally goes under the name of stick.

Steve Zodiac,

Thank you for using the Dell Community Forum.

Look under Mouse in the Control Panel.  In the Mouse Properties you will either have a Stick tab, or a dropdown box where you can choose Pointing Stick.

Must be under pointer or pointer options possibly?

The only other thing that I can think of is that the driver may not be installed properly?

Thanks both, but unfortunately I have neither.

The only tabs I have are Buttons | Pointers | Pointer Options | Wheel | Hardware, there is no stick tab or drop down box.

Make sure a mouse isn't attached, otherwise you won't necessarily see the control panel for your touchpad/pointing stick.

Thanks,
Mark

Thanks everyone, it is most appreciated.

I have disconnected the mouse (USB), but the touchpad or stick properties do not appear. I have noticed that under the 'Hardware' tab the entry is 'PS/2 Compatible Mouse' and when the USB mouse plugged in there are two entries, the second one being 'HID - compliant mouse'.

Is it because I appear to be using a 'generic' driver? If so, does anyone know which one I should load?

If you detach a mouse, you will either reboot the computer (optimal selection) or find the "reset devices" button under the mouse properties window. This releases that mouse driver.

Try booting up without a mouse and go to the mouse properties. It should look different.

Thanks,
Mark

Unfortunately this is what I did, but it looked the same.

It's my fault for having fingers that hit the wrong keys all the time ;-) I have just got to stop myself from turning it into an expensive frisbee.

Steve Zodiac,

Please no Flying Latitudes!

If you do not see the extra tabs, then you do not have the Touchpad drivers installed.  Use the Download tab above, and find the correct Touchpad drivers for your system, and install them.  You may need to uninstall the drivers for your USB mouse, if you installed any specific drivers for the mouse (Intellipoint, Mouseware, that sort of thing).

With the correct Touchpad drivers installed you should be able to change the settings and get rid of the problem, or at least lessen it.

You can also try a PS/2 mouse.  There is a setting in the BIOS to disable the Touchpad whenever a PS/2 mouse is attached.  Unfortunately, it does not work with USB mice.