Not really…, but I do have a problem whose diagnosis I know but not the treatment.
I just got a new laptop wwith XP Pro and Office Pro loaded. I turned off the speech toolbar that was floating around on the top. A few days later I see weird stuff happening on my laptop. the pointer would travel by itself, open menus and launch all kinds of stuff. Then when I open Google, things start getting typed in the search box all by itself… and omnious stuff at that
“…back up word for word for word for word…” Had me spooked for some time.
Now I know it is because the speech recognition is on. I opened the speech icon in the Control Panel, but nothing there to help me turn it off… only seetings that can be changed.
So, Dopers, any ideas how you can exorcise this from my PC?
Do you have a microphone plugged into your laptop, or a built in one? Try muting it. (Under volume control, switch from ‘playback’ to ‘recording’, and mute the microphone. I can give you more detailed directions if you need it: since I don’t know how computer literate you are.)
My guess at the moment is that the microphone is on, and picking up ambient sounds: then the speech recognition is assuming they’re commands.
Go to help and support in XP and look up languages. It should lead you to a place where you can remove the voice recognition as a language. Do it. I wish I could be more specific but I’m not at my XP machine right now.
Also, for your moving pointer. This wouldn’t so happen to be a DHell Inspiron would it? You have a touchstick in the middle of your keyboard? Disable it by going to mouse properties in the control panel. Often the stick is too sensitive and moves or double-clicks as you’re typing.
I used to work portables tech support at Dell and that was always the quickest fix since most everyone hated the touchstick anyway.