Mouse turns into Magnifying Glass

[bradbforbes]

I have a very strange problem, and I'm not sure if it's the fault of Windows 7 or my HP laptop.

When I close the laptop (fold the screen down) and then later open the screen back up to use my laptop again, very often my mouse pointer has turned into a Magnifying Glass icon.  If I try to move the mouse by using the Touchpad, instead of moving the mouse pointer, it zooms in or out of whatever window is open (ex. If a website is open, the text will get bigger or smaller.  If I'm just at my desktop, the shortcut icons get bigger or smaller.  Same functionality of the traditional Zoom.)  The left and right click functions work like a mouse pointer would, but since I can't move the pointer, that doesn't help me much.  Every time this happens, I have to manually turn off the laptop and reboot.

My laptop is a HP Pavilion dm3.  It has Windows 7 installed.  The problem has been occurring since the day I got the laptop, and I've been using it for about four months.

[jjmandl]

Hey Brad did you happen to find a resolution to this issue?  It is absolutely killilng me and also slowing down my work.  HP COME HELP!!

[gregorywei]

Hi - am having same problem, only for all the Dm3 users in my org.  Haven't figured out how to make it happen - it seems to happen daily for somr users, and only once in a while for others.  I am guessing this is an artifact of some HP-authored utility - the Dm3's out in the field were issued with essentially the HP OEM image - so they have all the HP utility stuff that came on the machines originally.

[illicitdolphin]

It's not a specific "HP" problem. And it's not a virus or anything. It was happening to me to and then I finally realized what the problem was. I am assuming all of you who are having this problem have "multitouch gestures" on your touchpads. Simply go into your control panel>hardware>devices>mouse and turn off the multitouch gestures. Uncheck all the boxes and click apply. If you still want to use the multitouch gestures, just re-check all the boxes and click apply again. Hope this solves your problem. Otherwise a simple reboot is advised!

[clarkwrichter]

Thanks! That took care of it & saved my sanity & returning my laptop.

[ChrisJ]

Hi folks

This problem is driving my users mad!

I couldn't see the "multitouch gesture" options you speak of... only options in "Mouse" are Buttons / Pointers / Pointer Options, Wheel and Hardware.  Anyone know what I'm missing?

Pointer Options / Enhance pointer precision seems to be the setting responsible, but after un-checking it, the m. glass goes away but the setting comes back by itself, and so does the m. glass!

The workaround for us so far has usually just lifting the lid by just a few cms and dropping it back down again.  (most users have external display)  This usually makes the magnifying glass disappear.

Real shame because these are good little machines otherwise.

Thanks for any help

Chris

[ChrisJ]

OK I may have answered my own question, it seems there's an updated ALPS driver.

Will apply this and report back.

Thanks

[gregorywei]

ChrisJ - did the updated ALPS driver solve the problem?

[ElvisMA]

SOLVED -- I had a similar problem, and it had to do with the touchpad (even when docked). It was extremely frustrating -- my cursor would change to then scroll any window that had focus. Or it would change to a magnifier and expand or contract the view to the point of being unusable.

I'm now 3 days fixed, and I did it this way:
1. I have a Dell laptop (sorry HP). They (~6/1/11) came out with an updated touchpad driver. I downloaded and installed that.
2. THEN I went into my mouse settings and disabled both tabs of multitouch settings.

That solved all my inadvertent scrolling and magnifying problems. MUCH better now. Hopefully HP can provide a similar updated driver....

[ElvisMA]

(Was trying to answer an earlier post...) See my post above. For Dells anyway you need the updated driver AND THEN you disable the multitouch abilities. Doing both completely fixed my problem.