frankshott,

Thank you for using the Dell Community Forum.

There is a Dell knowledge base article that gives instructions on troubleshooting your touch-pad:

Why does my cursor jump around the page while typing.

If you are using an external mouse and it requires additional drivers, I would suspect that these drivers are likely conflicting with those for the touch-pad. You should remove the drivers for both pointing devices and then reinstall those for the mouse that you wish to use.

Hi.. I have an Inspiron 4000 and had the exact same problem as you described.  It used to drive me absolutely nuts, and I lived with it for MONTHS.. it would do its little thing for several minutes, and usually would finally settle down... one day I couldn't stand it anymore, so I called Tech Support (I am kind of computer illiterate).  I described the problem to the Tech Lady; she knew exactly what it was, that a new driver needed to be downloaded.  She talked me through it, step by step; I had to go to some location on Dell's web site, download some kind of driver (she told me where to go), install it, and then showed me how to adjust the settings.  The mouse has worked perfectly ever since.  She also showed me how to disable the "pointing stick thing" ... (that little knob between the G and the H key on the keyboard) which I never used anyway.  I always use the touch pad.  Hope this info helps.  I think what may have happened was, the machine came with Windows Millenium and then I upgraded to XP when XP came out, and that may have screwed up the mouse somehow.  I am in Orlando Florida and we have many problems with Mouses here.. LOL

I bought 5 Inspiron 4000s for my company and 4 of them have developed this problem.  It all happened after about 2.5 years. 

Much effort with the Dell Support desk ended up with us having to ship them to Dell to get fixed at £250 a go. 

Mine got the motherboard replaced which fixed the problem BUT also meant I had to reinstall all my software, and even then the speakers didn't work.  A day wasted messing around with a helpful chap in India (but over an awful phone line) couldn't get that fixed so I've given up and every time I boot up I have to avoid trying to install a drvier that would otherwise lock up my PC.

That was 3 months back, and guess what - the random tracking mouse has returned again.  Seeing the messages above, I'm now downloading the new driver, although I fail to understand why that will help for something that had seemed to arrive with old age.  Will it solve this intermittent and extremely annoying problem? Stand-by for installment 2!

Installment 2.

Downloading and installing the latest Synaptics driver gave me a delighful little pressure rating graph, but 30 mins after the reboot, and my mouse is again taking random tours of the screen. 

I find resorting to the age old tradition of hitting the computer keyboard remarkably effective!

I look forward to further advice from Dell!

It was suggested to disable the little nub mouse in the center of the keyboard.  Although I never used it, I thought "what the heck" ... lo and behold, my mouse pointer is very well behaved and I am free of this irritating problem. 

I have 2 Inspiron 8000s with the Synapsis touchpad as well... and they both exhibit that problem where the mouse drifts all by itself even if I am not touching anything near the laptop.

I had the premier support for both, and Dell actually sent a tech. out to replace the keyboard/toucpad assembly twice.  The problem always returned.  It got to a point when they basically just told me to keep reinstalling drivers...

I think the problem has to do with the odd angle that the touchpad's connector sits.  It has a U shaped cable that is pinned right underneath the touchpad.  I found that if you poke at that wire through the removable drive slot, you could actually move the mouse cursor.

Thank you to those suggesting the diabling of the keyboard tracker.  I've done that and it's worked fine.

However, I'm not too impressed with DELL or Moderator Bob - They obviously don't understand the solution and are relying on user's input.  Reading the various threads, my take is that the problem is a physical problem caused by bad connections to the keyboard mouse stick - if you disable it the electrical problem goes away.  This work around is OK for users who don't use the keyboard stick, but replacing keyboards and charging customers, with the likelihood of the same problem reoccurring because the design hasn't changed - that's pretty scandalous!

The issue seems to have nothing to do with drivers and software, unless you need to upgrade them to ba able to disable the keyboard tracker.

Moreover, it's clearly a big issue - a quick scan of other threads and the following 2 are all relevant!

- Inspiron 4000 WinXP Pro--Solution to Problem with Mouse Dragging Across the Screen

- Mouse pointer start drifitng across the screen

I've never used this forum before and given there are 3 threads running within a short space of time, I'd guess there will be many out there like me getting very annoyed with their computer and presumably calling Dell helplines and creating a real cost to Dell - or are they making a killing by charging people for spares and unnecessary work to fix an inherent design flaw???.   I look forward to hearing Dell's comments.