Mouse and curser with a mind of their own.

[niknak]

I have an Acer laptop which is fine for what I need except that, just recently, the mouse screen pointer has developed a mind of its own and wanders off to a different part of the screen.
Also, when writing any script at all, I'll find that what I am writing will suddenly appear where the pointer happens to be at that time (usually somewhere within the previous paragraph), not continuing the sentence.

I am sure I've heard of this happening before but can't remember what the solution was.

Any ideas please?

[green granite]

Try turning the touch pad off.

[Mike-Bracknell]

First thing to do is to download and install the specific touchpad driver (usually Synaptics) as the default Microsoft one isn't always the best with certain touchpads.

Secondly, some laptops, when you squeeze the front left or right corner, it makes the touchpad go screwy. Re-squeezing the laptop sometimes resets things.

Finally, if you find (like me) that your palm sometimes touches the touchpad when typing, you will need to turn it off. This is done in the BIOS usually, and sometimes things can be set so that the connection of an external mouse disables the internal touchpad - this is a good compromise sometimes, as it means you can just plug in a mouse if things are annoying you too much.

[spannersatcx]

I find this too, with the synatics touchpad driver you can set it to switch off when a mouse is plugged in, that's what I do and it avoids the jumping around and inserting text where you don't want it.

[dazdaz1]

I have a Samsung laptop W7 Press 'Fn' key then F10 should turn off touch pad. Although you'll have to do this after each boot up to disable the touch pad.

D1

[mixture]

Clean the touchpad.

Grease and grime on touchpads can sometimes do weird and wonderful things.

[niknak]

I got a local repair man to look at it and he found that several years of my big hands assaulting the computer had squished some of the elements within the touchpad to death.
Apparantly the earlier Acers (mine is about 4 years old) had notoriously unreliable and unstable touchpads.
Fortunately he had a relatively new laptop in that had been badly damaged but the touchpad was OK, I got it for nothing and fitted for £10.

[stumpey]

That is one shop to go back to!
Free touch pad and fitted for £10? Incredible!!