The cursor on my new laptop computer has a habit of jumping around at random, with no rhyme or reason. This happens all the time when I am typing in Outlook or Word. Can I stop this from happening? The computer is running Windows XP.

The most common reason for cursors skipping on laptop computers when typing is your hand or wrist accidentally brushing (or making contact with) the laptop trackpad. I have seen this happen many times, and most laptops offer a lock-out feature on the trackpad to prevent this from happening. This should lock-out the trackpad from accepting any input, meaning that if you accidentally touch the trackpad when typing it will not move the cursor on screen. To test whether accidentally touching the trackpad is the problem, be particularly attentive when typing on the keyboard to see whether you are touching the trackpad. If this is the problem, check whether your laptop has a lock-out feature for the trackpad. If not, you may need to just be more careful when typing to ensure you do not touch the trackpad. Alternatively, you could connect an external keyboard to your computer and eliminate the need to type on the laptop keyboard altogether.

Should the problem not be related to accidentally touching the trackpad when typing on the keyboard, the next possible explanation could be related to the drivers installed on your laptop. If there is a conflict between the drivers for your trackpad and another device on the computer this could result in erratic behaviour of the trackpad and cursor on screen. If your computer is a brand name machine, visit the computer manufacturer’s website to check whether there are any updated drivers or utilities available for the trackpad. If so, download and install these updates to check whether the problem is resolved.

If installing updated drivers does not fix the issue, it is possible that some application or process running in the background is causing a conflict. To eliminate this possibility, I suggest that you follow the instructions detailed in Bill’s question above to disable all programs and processes from loading on startup and check whether the problem continues or stops. This may allow you to narrow down the cause of the problem to either a specific program or process. Please let me know how this goes.