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3 Perplexing, persistant pointer problem
Sorry. I just had to go for the alliteration in the title! Anyways, I've got an HP ENVY Touchsmart 27 from a friend right now, which is a humongous all in one machine. When my friend brought it to me, it had two problems: It was very slow, because of an HDD, and the mouse had this funny habit of jumping all over the place, and a strange attraction to the bottom right hand corner of the screen. So I bought an SSD, and cloned his old drive to it, solving the speed problem, but the mouse problem was rather intermittent. I figured it just had something to do with radio interference with the included wireless mouse, so I ordered a corded mouse, thinking that would solve the problem. However, after I sent it back to him, he kept telling me the problem was just getting worse to the point where even entering the password became impossible because the errant mouse kept clicking that corner. The internal keyboard and mouse are paired to the computer with a USB dongle like most wireless peripherals, but to preserve aesthetics, HP decided to put this dongle in a hidden internal USB port. We removed the dongle and switched to a 100% wired setup, and the problem persisted. I told him to bring it back to me, thinking I could try changing a few settings, and if that didn't work, assume it was a classic case of Windows getting all borked up, back up his data, through a Linux USB if necessary, and start from a fresh copy. This morning I tinkered around with it a little, but I couldn't get anything to work in Windows. Fed up, I found my trusty Ubuntu USB stick, booted the machine from that, and prepared myself for problem-free bliss. Or not. Once it booted, I was bamboozled to find the mouse jumping around, especially to that bottom right-hand corner, just like in Windows. Does this mean it's a hardware problem? If so, what would need to be replaced if the problem persisted with two separate mice in Windows? I'm completely at my wit's end here, so any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you!
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2 comentarios
It was indeed the touchscreen! I had noticed in settings that a touchscreen was detected, but whenever I tried touching it, I received no response so I figured the listing was erroneous. I realize now that the corner that the pointer was strangely attracted to did have the little transparent shapes that appear when touch on Windows is used. I don't know how I was too stupid to not put 2 and 2 together! Especially since I repaired a laptop that was afflicted with an identical problem a couple months ago. Anyways, since my friend has no need for touch, I disabled the touchscreen in Device Manager, and will give it back to him tomorrow!
Thank you!
- de 907fixer
@aactech
If you'll change your comment to an answer, I'll accept it.
- de 907fixer