"Mouse Drift" on Dell Latitudes ????

Raiser

Since about 2000 approx. I can recall an awfull lot of Dell Latitude Laptops suffering from what is generally called "mouse drift" - basically mouse pointer takes off in a particular direction, repeatedly & stubbornly for up to a minute or two at a time [GRRRRR] and drives you to dementia.

I think this is because a ribbon cable to the pointer stick in the keyboard is affected by the Latitudes paper thin plastic case - palm-rest area in particular.

My own Latitude - an old C610 is doing this a lot now - anyone got a cure ?

I've heard of people cutting the cable to the pointer stick and thus solving the problem while settling for just having a trackpad - which I could live with....

iopjkl

Reinstall the Synaptics Touchpad Driver

Raiser

Thanks for your reply - will do. Anyone else recommend causes / cures for this one ?

mossieh

There's no really straightforward solution for this...by all means, reinstall the driver, upgrade the bios etc...the problem will probably come back eventually...if you go through the dell forums, you'll see they've tried pretty much everything, including replacing all the components involved...your best bet I would say is to disconnect/disable the touchpad and pointer in the bios and use a mouse whenever you can, only using the other options when on the move.

Sorry I have no better suggestions, but Dell really screwed up on this one...like the '8ik' problem in the cpx series laptops, they never had the will to fix it as it would have been too expensive to replace all the affected machines...they just ignored it instead.

Cryos

Raiser wrote:

Thanks for your reply - will do. Anyone else recommend causes / cures for this one ?

Hi Raiser,

I work on a HP Customer account that has about 50 of these units (c600 and C610) still in service, the cause of the problem is acctually to do with Heat. The touchpad on the units are really badly made, generally they vear off in a diagnal motion to the top right of your screen; because the majority of heat comes from the mid right part of the unit (right hand side of the keyboard).

Like has been said in the above posts, there is no solution; however check if your fan is clogged up with stuff if so just clean it out and it might make the laptop run a bit cooler and might slow the process.

The only solution we could provide at work was replace the units for a brand new laptop.

gamer

Buy a SMALL laptop,usb 2.0 mouse.10euro approx.

shoegirl

mossieh wrote:

Sorry I have no better suggestions, but Dell really screwed up on this one...like the '8ik' problem in the cpx series laptops, they never had the will to fix it as it would have been too expensive to replace all the affected machines...they just ignored it instead.

From what I remember the problem originated with a lot of laptops designed around early to mid 2001 and at the time Dell canned a lot of their design teams in Austin, leaving nobody to analyse and fix the problem. A colleague also suggested it was something to do with the kind of metal that was in the keybord/palmrest.

You should be able to order a new palmrest and keyboard, which might fix it for under 50 euros, also try disabling the pointer, sometimes fixes it.

gamer

I,m left handed,i got laptec laptop optical mouse pro,small light laptop usb mouse,much more comfortable and faster than using mousepad,bout 30percent smaller than standard mouse,it also has a great scroll whell.

Raiser

- Thanks for all the replies folks (was away last few weeks) - will experiment some more and post back.

maidhc

My old thinkpad did this a lot.

Never found a solution i'm afraid. It sorted itself out when it warmed up!

deadbloke

I had this problem with my Dell Inspiron 8600. It was just an annoyance for a couple of months, but then got very bad, and I couldn't control the cursor at all. Tried re-installing drivers, and was about to buy a usb mouse, when someone told me to disable the pointer stick. This worked a treat, as I never use the stick anyway. The touchpad still works completely.