Recently I bought a laptop running a version of Windows (something more recent than Windows 98). I installed Microsoft Word 2000 on the computer and I have one major problem. As I type a document the flashing mark cursor (which indicates where you are on the page) skips back to a previous line which means I start typing in the middle of the document putting the whole thing out of order. It usually moves back about a sentence. As you can imagine this is very annoying. I think it may have something to do with the laptop as I’ve never experienced this problem before. Also, when I plug an external keyboard into the laptop there appears to be no problem. Any help would be much appreciated.

A possible explanation for this problem is that when you are typing on the laptop’s keyboard, your thumbs may be inadvertently moving along the trackpad causing the cursor to move. To test this, type one fingered on the laptop keyboard and make sure that no other part of your hand is in contact with the trackpad. If this does not make things better, then consider reinstalling Word should the problem be unique to Word and does not happen when using other text based applications. Should the problem persist, it may be caused by a conflict between the trackpad drivers and the graphics card drivers. First make sure that you have the most recent drivers for both your trackpad and graphics card. If this doesn’t work, then the workaround would be to plug an external mouse into the computer. This will override the trackpad and thus the conflict will not occur. However, this is almost as inconvenient as having an external keyboard and also defeats the purpose of having a laptop computer. If installing the most recent drivers does not solve the problem, there may be a conflict (eg. IRQ conflict) between two devices. This occurs when two devices are using the same IRQ channel as only one device is allowed per channel otherwise miscommunications between the devices and the computer can occur. To see if this is the problem, go to the ‘Start’ menu > ‘Settings’ > ‘Control Panel’ and open the ‘System’ control panel. Click the ‘Device Manager’ tab and look for any devices in the list, in particular the trackpad and another device, with an exclamation mark as their icon. If you find any, double click them to identify the conflict. In the event of a conflict, the best solution is to remove one of the conflicting devices and then reinstall the device as the computer will, hopefully, reinstall it without conflicting with other devices. If you do this, I suggest that the device you remove is one which is relatively non vital, for which you readily have the drivers available (so you are not stuck without the device for a prolonged period of time) and which you are confident you know how to install. It may be tricky in some situations, for example if there is a conflict between the trackpad and the video card, as both devices are very important. I suggest you make an informed decision based on the drivers available.