Acer Keyboard problem

[ahhaa]

This Acer is a 2 yr old 64 bit laptop running win7 on an Athlon CPU.
Mostly it works fine, but I have no fondness for the touchpad, and usually use a Logitech nano mouse.

Thing is, the cursor sometimes jumps to a different spot in a body of text all by itself, which if you are rattling on, is incredibly annoying (channeling Rodney here).

The thing about that is it doesn't always do it- and when it does it only does it once in a particular window session. Say I'm in a forum post using Firefox- once I move the cursor from the initial typing stream (say to fix a typo), it is very likely the following text will be inserted somewhere more of less at random.

It also seems more likely to do it some places rather than others- I've moved the cursor several times in this post and of course it won't- almost the definition of intermittent!:]

I was thinking dirty keyboard contacts, or mebbe having dual mouse inputs, but neither explain all the behavior.

Any guesses on what else it could be?

[Nelson37]

It would be helpful to know how you are moving the cursor when this happens.

Sounds like a mouse problem and NOT a keyboard problem. But check for a sticky CTRL or Shift key.

My first suspect would be not lifting the finger off the touchpad, this is very common.

Next would be a bad or overly sensitive switch on the mouse itself, try a different one.

But then, knowing how you are moving the cursor would be the first point.

[ahhaa]

Well, it usually happens in the middle of a word, or just after repostiioning the cursor to correct spelling (such as that i in repositioning). I do not use the touchpad at all unless the mouse is not available (such as moving the computer to access a laser printer in another room).

The same goes for the mouse, it is not in use when the cursor jumps randomly elsewhere.
Along this line, the Acer has a short spacebar that keeps part of your thumbs over the corners of the touchpad.
I am not aware of touching it, but proximity is 1/8" when pressing spacebar. I am not a 'vigorous typist', very light pressure. Touchpad has a scroll function, but again, it is the cursor not the pointer that is jumping around- and inside a post window mostly.
thanks for the getback...

[Nelson37]

Do you have an external KB port? If so, plug one in and test. Just for good measure, remove the external mouse and disable the touchpad, if possible.

Test EXTENSIVELY, both in suspect apps and also something simple like Notepad. Could be corrupted software, virus, Internet connectivity issue.

[neomaine]

Have you disabled the touchpad? I despise any touchpad on a laptop and disabling it is the first thing I do when working on one. I'm a touch typist and the lower part of my thumb comes in contact to it constantly. If I were a two-figner-Frank, it might not bother me, but...