h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I have a problem with my PC, which I have had since I bought it 2 years ago, seems to be getting worse. My PC is a laptop with where the mouse is a touchpad infront of the keyboard.

The problem is when I am typing the cursor suddenly jumps to another random point on the page and this generally happens every couple of lines. Initially when I mentioned it to a friend she said hers did the same thing and she thought she was accidentally touching the mouse pad, but I am sure I am not touching the mouse pad and the constant jumping makes it impossible to type properly.

I have since mentioned it to others who have the same problem. Can anyone help me? Is it a problem with the actual PC itself or is it caused by my Windows XP Home?

(My PC was re-formatted about 7 months ago and eveything was reinstalled, by the problem still persisted.)

It sounds like a problem with the mousepad to me. Can you plug in an ordinary mouse and disable the touch pad mouse, just for test purposes? Does this cure it? If so, you can buy a nifty little mouse which you can carry around with the laptop so it won't add much to the total weight.

Ah, that's an interesting suggestion. I always use an external plug-in mouse anyway so dis-enabling the mouse pad wouldn't affect my use - all I need to do now is figure out how to dis-enable it.

If its anything like the toshiba I had a few years back with exact same problem, the solution wasn't so muh to disable the mouse pad thinggy on it; but set the sensitivity so high that it didn't pick anything up

.... I think I mean 'so low*' not 'high*'

Well, I have tried dis-enabling the mouse, but apparently I can't do it on this system/programme (?). I shall see if I can reduce the sensitivity.

I hope someone can help me....when I am in Internet Explorer and I try to bring up a web site, the egg-time appears but nothing happens as it seems to jam and I have to 'End the programme'. However, I can read my e-mails and bring up web sites on My Favourites, but can't get any other web sites. (I have run a virus check and it found nothing.)

Please Help as I'm desperate!!

In Internet Explorer, Select Tools/Options. Click on the Security tab and on the Internet "world". What is the security level set to? Is it Medium? If it is High, try changing it to Medium.

It was already set on Medium.

Grasping at straws here: are you putting http:// in front of the urls when you are typing them in?

Can you go to links such as the following?

http://www.google.com

Yes and Yes!!

Well actually I've tried typing http:// and just typing www. but neither works.

So, to be absolutely clear about this:

You can click on the google link above, and it goes to google. But when you type in the same text into the address bar and click on Go, nothing happens. Yes?

Yes, if I click on the Google link, Google comes up ok and if I type a word in, Amazon for instance, it will bring it up and I can click on the Amazon web site and it comes up. However, if I type www.amazon.co.uk (or anything else) in the normal Address bar, the computer freezes.

(I don't know if this is at all relevant, but I have recently been pestered by a 'pop-up' saying Microsoft Win Fixer (it seems to get past my pop-up stopper) - do you know the one I am talking about? Could it be upsetting my PC?)

Still grasping at straws:

What about if you click on the little downward-pointing triangle at the end of the address bar, select a previously visited address from the list and then click on Go?

It jams if I do that.

I had similar problems with Internet Explorer - something to do with the auto-complete function in the address bar (I'd guess that's what Gnomon might be thinking of). I remember following instructions to disable it, with no avail, and ended up writing addresses in Notepad and copying and pasting them into IE, which worked. It was ages ago now, though - about 6 years, and using IE4. At the time the problem seemed to resolve itself I think when I installed Windows 98 with IE5. I don't know if I had any third party software on with IE4 that I didn't with IE5.

Perhaps this link would be useful? http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/

Firefox will probably solve one problem

As for the jumping mouse... as you have an 'ordinary' mouse as well, you can/should 'disable' the in-built touch pad mouse, by going to:

Start / Control Panel / (if you are using 'Category View', as opposed to 'Classic View') Printers And Other Hardware / Mouse / the 'Device Settings' tab / select the 'Touch Pad' mouse name (under 'Devices') / click 'Disable' / done

Unfortunately my PC became critically ill to the point where is was unuseable, hence my lack of postings. I had to call out the PC doctor who has sort of fixed it, but it has not yet fully recovered.