I’ve sadly got a problem I’ve really got no idea how to fix. My GF’s got a used machine, IBM case, who knows what brand cards inside. The keyboard and mouse are both HP. It has an onboard IO card. Right now anytime that I use the mouse by itself I have no problem whatsoever. But as soon as I start typing the mouse will jerk all over the place, sometimes clicking by itself. For example, if I’m in Word and typing something I’ll have to see the cursor randomly jumping around the screen and once in a while it’ll ask me if I want to save (as if I clicked the close button {top right}).
So this is a machine running Windows 98. I’ll probably put a USB optical mouse on there if I can’t get it to work otherwise, but seeing as I’m a seriously poor out of work graduate at the moment, I’d prefer just to fix the problem.
Anyone? Could anyone give me some suggestions on possible fixes?
Oy. Typing this after finishing the remnants of my Jim Beam bottle. Nice flavour, but not good for my typing skills. Uh… I’ll shut up now. TY.
If the mouse and the keyboard both have the same kind of connector on them, try swapping them, i.e., plug in the mouse where the keyboard was plugged in before, and vice-versa. And reboot. It sounds like the computer is interpreting keyboard strokes as mouse inputs.
Exactly, Early. I’ll be giving that a shot tomorrow, when I can get at my GF’s machine. The only problem with that theory is that the mouse works fine by itself, like when I’m not typing at all. And the keyboard works almost perfectly (I can type at my full speed), just that the mouse cursor jumps whenever I am typing.
Anyway, good idea, and I’ll let you know how it pans out. Thank you.
If the mouse and keyboard were each plugged into the wrong port, neither would work at all. Given that the mouse works perfectly when you are not using the keyboard, my guess is an intermittently stuck key such as ctrl, alt or shift. Can you test to see if the odd mouse behaviour occurs after any particular keystrokes? Try giving the keyboard a good cleaning by blowing any crumbs or dust out of it also. I am assuming no liquid has been spilled on the keyboard? If all else fails, you can get a cheap keyboard for considerably less than a bottle of Jim Beam.
The only time something like that happened to me was on a laptop with a faulty touchpad. But this is a desktop with keyboard and mouse connected to separate ps/2 ports (small round connectors), right? And you actually see the mouse pointer move around on the screen? (I.e. it’s not the keyboard activating various shortcuts?)
Sounds like a problem with the motherboard or software to me. Even if the keyboard was faulty, I don’t think it can move a mouse pointer.
Does the outline of a two-button mouse appear in the system tray (usually in the lower-right corner of the screen next to the time)? If so, the MouseKeys feature is turned on. It can be turned off through Start|Settings|Control Panel|Accessibility Options.
Oops… Thanks for all the help, but I don’t think any of these suggestions so far could be the problem. MouseKeys is definitly not on (although I got quite proficient with MouseKeys in college). I don’t think the keyboard’s dirty or anything like that, since I’m actually seeing the cursor move and click different things, so no shortcuts are being activated by the keyboard.
I’d just like to try to figure out how I can solve this. I don’t think it’s a defect in the keyboard, more likely drivers or motherboard. So I don’t think that getting a new KB would help…