Problem with laptop ... help please!

Ok, have had a problem with my laptop for a week now. I can't find any help over the internet, I've sent some e-mails to some computer people............no reply. So, I thought I would give BSG a try.

It's a basic problem, I think. On all laptops you have two buttons and a pad which are in place of a mouse. The left button and the pad are not as instant as they should be i.e. when I double click on something, sometimes it just clicks once or doesn't respond at all. On the right hand side of my pad I can use my finger to scroll down the page, but when I do that now, sometimes it highlights all of the words I have written.

It's really pissing me off now. Anyone know what's up with this?

Thanks in advance.

Windows, Mac, Linux, other?

Windows

Assuming you haven't made any changes to the mouse settings, it sounds like the left button is sticking. Not sure how to go about safely cleaning/fixing something like that. Might try some compressed air?

I'm not on a Windows at the moment, so I won't be much help. But have you tried tweaking the mouse settings, which can be found in the Control Panel folder, I think?

You can adjust the response times of buttons being pressing and the speed in which you move your finger, ect.

Otherwise it maybe a hardware problem and if it is, I'm clueless. Get a mouse?

I'm writing at the moment and when I'm in the middle of a sentence it just jumps to another line completely on it's own. Something is definitely wrong.

Yes, sounds like a hardware issue. Try cleaning (carefully - perhaps with a slightly damp cloth, not running water) the buttons and pad.

Have you spilt anything on it, or used the machine with greasey or sticky fingers? Could anyone else have had access to the machine and done the same?

I've had the laptop for about three years, perhaps there is crap under the buttons too, am I able to do anything about that whilst not f'ing my keyboard up?

Tapping the pad is a mouse click, that's your problem. Sounds like what you're doing is 'bouncing' your finger. ie. you hit the pad slightly too hard, your finger's registered one 'click' and, as it's landed again, you've done the equivalent of clicking the mouse and holding the button down and then moving it around, which highlights all the text.

When it jumps it's because part of your hand/palm is brushing the pad in the middle, so it thinks you're attempting to move the mouse.

Not sure if you can turn off the touch-sensitive pad 'click' function. Have a look in control panel >> mouse and see if there's reference to a touch pad there.

Hope this (makes sense!) and helps

Dan

Thats great, thanks.

Quote: Mike Dan-Carter @ April 27 2009, 4:23 PM BST

I've had the laptop for about three years, perhaps there is crap under the buttons too, am I able to do anything about that whilst not f'ing my keyboard up?

View original

Not really, no.

Quote: DaButt @ April 27 2009, 4:15 PM BST

Assuming you haven't made any changes to the mouse settings, it sounds like the left button is sticking.

View original

That's what I thought too.

Definitely sounds like your 'mouse' button is sticking, that would cause the higlighting too.

Obviously getting your laptop wet at all is a bad thing, so dry cleaning is probably the way to go.

... Or you could go plug in a USB mouse instead and go to 'control panel' to disable the mousepad.

A wireless mouse would be a nice solution if tinkering with the touch-pad settings doesn't improve things.