Computer help forum: Synaptics touchpad/ erratic cursor problem

I have the same problem on a Dell Studio running WIN7.

I tried your suggested fix (in WIN7's control panel, you need to click "Devices and Printers" to get to the Mouse option; not exactly intuitive).

Unchecking "Enhance pointer precision" helped somewhat, but unchecking "Automatically move pointer to the default button in a dialogue box" helped somewhat more.

Still, the pointer jumps around the page periodically (3-4 times while I was typing this response.

Seems the folks at Synaptics need to do some more work on their product -- and manufacturers need to vet their third-party products before hoisting them on the paying public.

My Packard Bell laptop has this "trackpad/touchpad" thing and it drove me crazy.

In the end I gave up. I connected a USB mouse and disabled the trackpad.

My dive into insanity has been halted!

Mark

It's been almost a week since I sent a message to DELL through their "support" center -- and no response! Just one more reason my next PC will be a MAC!

Hi all - looks like we're all having similar problems and although synaptic seems to be part of the problem, it seems the vast majority are with toshiba laptops (mine is L505D GS6000) thanks for all the suggestions but most of them center around directions which do not apply to my model - those choices are not there.
however after hours of reading, talking to toshiba, etc I somewhat accidentally stumbled upon a partial fix. at one point I went back to toshiba support, then windows support (that comes with this model), ended up with updates (windows) and saw one I'd never seen before or had updated on its own. since it had "snaptic" in the names, I said what the heck and installed it. much to my surprise it disabled the touchpad, the keyboard jumping stopped, and I just plugged the mouse back in and now it's fine after weeks of getting worse and worse where I couldn't even compose an email.

you might try this. I'm sorry I didn't write it down but will see if I can find it. the real culprit for such a damaging bug is the manufacturer. if we weren't all so busy we should combine forces, send a letter to the ceo, and all sign it. but anyway, see if you can recreate what I did. I can't tell you what a relief it is. I was like the other two commenters who were ready to pull their hair out. and this laptop was halfway to the dump.. good luck!
Fred Lorey

hi.....finally had this rectified, went to a toshiba service centre and they replaced the touchpad under wanrranty.

I realize this is an old post, but I've continued to have a problem with an erratic Touchpad. My laptop is an HP Pavilion dv5117cl. I upraded it to Windows 7 and maxed out the memory on it. My problem seemed to appear after I loaded Windows 7. Assuming it was a conflict between the Touchpad and Win7, I've attempted to update the driver software, with no luck. I've also played around with the sensitivity settings. Neither of these fixes seemed to help and only made using the Touchpad more frustrating to use. Tonight I simply uninstalled the Synaptics driver and am now just using the generic Windows driver. So far, so good. The touchpad is infinitely more responsive and doesn't seem to have a mind of its own anymore. It still allows me to move the cursor and tap or double-tap to click. It no longer jumps around and randomly clicks things on its own anymore. However, (not sure if it's related to the generic driver) I just noticed that my arrow keys no longer work.

My Acer Aspire 5630 has a Synaptics trackpad, it seems to be the controller chip on the motherboard, Mine is under the trackpad button, it seems to get rather hot when in use for long periods of time and when it does, that's when all hell breaks loose, disabling it and lettig it settle for about 10 or 15 minutes resolves the issue long enough for me to finish doing what I'm doing, but it is helpful to know how to work a PC with no mouse!, but it still has a very bad tendancy to behave very eratically and I am forced to use keyboad shortcuts to shut it down, the system is clear and has ever really had a virus or other form of malware (other than virtual machine based virus testing, which has no effect on the host PC at all). The chip should be made by realtek and have the little crab emblem on it, I think it's an ALC883 chip, it also amplifies the sound which may be why it hets hot, but I've had the laptop for around 5 or so years and this a relatively new issue that rarely happens but when it does the trackpad is pretty much unuseable!