How To Stop Curser From Opening Apps When Hovering In 8.1

Reader has tried various ways, without success, to stop the cursor jumping to new locations on its own.

Q: I have a Lenovo laptop with Windows 10. Whenever I use a word processing program, the cursor jumps to a new location on its own, often taking text with it. If I reboot the machine, the word processing program works without problem for a short time (usually a couple of hours) but then the same things happen again. I have tried using Microsoft Word, OpenOffice Writer and LibreOffice Writer and it happens with all of them. I've also uninstalled and re-installed my mouse and keyboard drivers but this has made no difference. Any ideas what I can do?

—Dana Peterson, Palm City

A: Usually when the cursor jumps around without reason, it's caused by the user accidentally hitting the mouse touchpad on his or her laptop while typing. Rarely, if ever, does the problem generate from a specific program (or program type), since programs rarely control mouse operation—this is usually part of the operating system.

Similarly, know that just because you have an external mouse attached to your laptop, the built-in mousepad is not automatically disabled.

With that in mind, the first step towards solving the problem is ensuring your laptop's mouse touchpad is completely disabled.

According to the Lenovo support pages , you can disable your laptop's touchpad by performing the following steps:

"Press the corresponding button (such as F6, F8 or Fn+F6/F8/Delete) to disable the touchpad. If shortcut key does not disable or enable the touchpad, please go to Lenovo support website to download and install the latest touchpad driver then retry."

Please note: According to Lenovo, the touchpads on their laptops have been set to enable automatically whenever you first turn on the computer or wake it from hibernation, so you may need to repeat the steps above if you notice the issue recurring after first disabling the touchpad.

In addition to disabling the touchpad this way, Lenovo also recommends you disable the Synaptics driver for the touchpad device. The Synaptics driver is what most laptops use to allow the user to control the laptop cursor via the built-in touchpad.

Keep in mind that disabling the main mouse driver does not mean the Synaptics driver has been updated or disabled as well, as they are independent of one another, even though they manage the same device.

To do this, follow these steps:

Click on Start, then Control Panel, then Mouse. In the window that appears, titled "Mouse Properties," click on the Device Settings tab, highlight the Synaptics device under the "Devices" section and click on "Disable." A warning window will appear. Click OK to clear it, then click on Apply, then OK. This will disable mouse driver and the mouse touchpad as well. (To enable it again, follow the same instructions, only click the "Enable" button this time.)

If problems persist beyond this, please contact Lenovo support directly.

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