When I have seen problems like this with a laptop, it has always turned 
out to be the thumb or the heel of the hand brushing close enough to the 
touchpad to be detected and reacted to.  Disabling the touchpad is a good 
way to eliminate this.

David Gillett


On 20 Feb 2006 at 20:56, Dale Mentzer wrote:

> Hugh,
> 
> The touchpad appears in the Device Manager as a PS/2 mouse the same as
> when I have a PS/2 mouse installed.  After I posted to the list, I
> disabled the Touchpad in the BIOS, and connected a serial mouse to the
> serial port. So far it has not messed up. I am wondering whether 
> there might be a poor connection at the PS/2 connector, perhaps even a
> broken solder joint at the board where the PS/2 port mounts to the
> board internally. I've seen and repaired similar broken joints at the
> power connector of a couple of other old laptops caused by frequent or
> rough connection/disconnection of the power connector. Perhaps I
> should reconnect the the PS/2 mouse and play around with the connector
> and see if I can induce the erratic behavior mechanically. 
> 
> Regards,
> Dale Mentzer
>   
> ======= At 2006-02-19, 23:00:09 you wrote: =======
> 
> >----------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >Date:    Sun, 19 Feb 2006 04:14:48 -0500
> >From:    Hugh Vandervoort <[log in to unmask]>
> >Subject: Re: "Crazy" mouse problem
> >
> >This sounds like a resource conflict.
> >Have you tried disabling the Touchpad in Control Panel/System?
> >
> >Dale Mentzer wrote:
> >> Hello listers,
> >> 
> >> I have an old Dell Latitude LM 133MMX laptop running Windows 98se. The laptop has a touchpad which I do not use or like and am using a PS/2 mouse. My problem is that after a variable period of operation (sometimes for quite a long while and sometimes after only a short bit of operation) the mouse goes "crazy" as the pointer moves erratically all over the screen, opening context menus, rearranging my desktop, etc.  The only thing that "fixes" this is for me to leave the mouse alone and use the Task Manager 
(via keyboard) to terminate the open apps and then reboot the laptop. I have not tried a serial mouse since I occasionally use the serial port for my old Polaroid digital camera. The touchpad works fine, I just don't like it very well so I cannot say for sure if this happens when using the touchpad too since I've not used it enough to know. I've tried several PS/2 mice and some seem to cause this problem more than others. I am using a classic Microsoft branded PS/2 mouse 
> >which seems cause the least problems. Has anybody had any experience with this problem? TIA.
> >> 
> >> Regards,
> >> Dale Mentzer
> >
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