Cursor randomly jumps around screen

[Devlee]

I had the same problem on a 6-month old X360 spectre laptop with touchscreen on Windows 10.

Instead of disabling the touchscreen, I disabled the stylus (stylet in French) in the human device interface section of the device manager.

See here for an image and an explanation where it is located (text in French, but image in English).

Thus I still have a working touchscreen (and I had no stylus). 2 days and nothing to report.

[rauufSky]

I've got problem with my spectre x360 unit. Latest one with 8th gen Intel. The cursor going crazy after less than one hour of usage after purchased. Just have a chat with HP Malaysia this afternoon. They said they gonna replace it. Looking forward for the replacement unit.

[rauufSky]

Still waiting.....

[dmonroe216]

Good morning. I tried every troubleshooting tip at least a few times. Ultimately it was an issue with hardware. I sent my laptop in to HP for warranty service and they replaced the screen. I had the laptop back probably 7-10 days later, it may have been less. It was very quick and I have not had any further issues. 

[JAWjr]

Shortly after I bought an HP Spectre almost a year ago, I started noticing that the cursor seemed to move randomly on the screen. It has gotten progressively worse to the point that the machine is harder to work with.

As I am keying in, the cursor will randomly jump to the point where the mouse had left it even though I have added words or sentences since there. Sometimes the cursor will select a large amount of text and the next keystroke I happen to enter will remove all the selected text. Thank God for Ctl-Z to get it back.

I first asked the dealer, Best Buy, if they had heard about this problem and they said no. I have tried not touching the keypad and being very careful about keys I touch to look for some strange sensitivity. I have turned the mouse off, I have replaced its batteries, I have moved the computer to avoid any electromagnetic interference., I have rebooted many times.

The problem occurs in connection with keying in on the keyboard. It is not a function of certain software; it happens with all - text editor, Word, Excel, Firefox, email. Lately, it will sometimes flip to a different window than the one I am entering data into.

Needless to say, I am extremely unhappy with this flaw. The machine is getting closer to being unusable.

---------

Reading other msgs, I looked into the Mouse settings. I tried disabling the keypad when my USB mouse was connected. I found I could bang away at the keyboard as fast as possible and the cursor never jumped away from the end of the text being entered. Not having the keypad is sometimes an inconvenience. But it is way better than constantly having to edit what I had just typed. And way better than having the machine off being repaired.

I suspect there is a bug in the Synaptics keypad driver. HP, can you see about that. In the meantime, I hope this helps all the rest of you: just check "Disable internal poining device when external USB pointing device is attached" in Mouse Properties> ClickPad Settings.

[Devlee]

Hello JAWjr,

have you turned off only the mouse, or also other things like the stylus I identified some post above? I did not have a physical stylus (probably like a touch screen pen), but the computer was behaving like if I was using one and pointing annoyingly around some spot.

Your problem seems similar to what I was experiencing, but in my case, it would also happen when I was scrolling or trying to select anything anywhere.

[JAWjr]

I don't have a stylus. I have not had the problem of the text entry point jumping to the middle of the screen. It would typically jump to wherever the mouse cursor had been left when I began text entry. Then it really started getting bizarre when it would flip to another window.

I checked the Synaptics website for a driver update. They don't appear to distribute them since they are modified by the OEM. HELLO, HP. Have you updated the ClickPad driver to fix this?

[JAWjr]

I forgot to underscore that I tried any number of ways of isolating the mouse from interfering with the ClickPad. The cursor (mis)behavior did not change.

It was only when I disabled the ClickPad all together that the sympotoms cleared. The problem is not your mouse. The problem is the ClickPad itself. Whether it's hardware or software, I can't determine.

[Sliebman]

I have been having this issue also, and just tried your workaround.  Thank you for finally answering this question, even if it was only a workaround .  Glad that someone took the time to help others, as all the answers i have seen to this MASSIVE problem, that alot of folks seem to have, have been fruitless, and cumbersome.  I switched back to a windows laptop after several years on a mac, and this just about drove me right back to my mac. 

HP needs to fix this flaw permanently!

[Sliebman]

By the way, i had tried several of the "fixes" and dissabled just about everything, all to no avail.....why should i have to dissable functions of my $1700 laptop, just to get it work properly???

Hello HP, have you fixed this yet?