My stupid cursor keeps leaving town!!!

November 13, 2009 1:54 PM

I'm using Outlook 2003 with Word as my editor on an XP machine. I cannot touch type so I look at the keyboard while typing. My problem is that I will look up and find that the cursor has "left" for some reason and what I have typed has not been entered into the email. I have to move the cursor back to the email and left click before I can type into the document.

I have looked up from the keyboard and seen the hourglass appear just before the cursor departs.

I have Googled this to death and apparently just can't find the right search terms. This is driving me crazy. Please help!

posted by Carbolic to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

Are you using a laptop? I have had trouble in the past with my palms moving the cursor on the touchpad while typing. Nicer touchpads will let you disable them while typing.
posted by ghharr at 1:58 PM on November 13, 2009 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: There was another cursor related question that didn't address my problem exactly. It did cue me to mention that I have run Spybot and defrag. Some answerers alluded to another program trying to "steal focus" which sounds like what might be going on but I haven't been able to identify a program. The autosave in Word is set to 10 minutes but my cursor disappears more often than that.
posted by Carbolic at 1:59 PM on November 13, 2009

Response by poster: Desktop. No touch pad involved. Also, the keyboard and mouse are hard wired.
posted by Carbolic at 2:00 PM on November 13, 2009

Start by using something like the Startup Control Panel (stfw and download it). See what other programs are being set up to run all the time. Kill just about everything else, reboot and see if the problem disappears. Then look to see if you've got some sort of keyboard and/or mouse driver program loaded. Look in the Add/Remove Programs control panel for them and consider either removing or checking for updates. It's entirely possible a keyboard driver has been loaded to take advantage of 'features' in the keyboard (like multimedia cruft). If not the current keyboard, perhaps one previously used. Finally there's the Hijack program that can do a relatively complete dump of what programs are installed and running. Pore over it's results to see what doesn't belong.
posted by wkearney99 at 2:18 PM on November 13, 2009

There are hot-key sequences you can hit by accident which will cause focus to change. I do that all the time, but since I do touch type and watch the screen, I do notice it when it happens.

The "windows" key all by itself will do that. But depending on who you got your computer from, and what software they preinstalled, there can be a swarm of others. The ALT key is not your friend. Neither is the FN key if your keyboard has one.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 2:38 PM on November 13, 2009

TweakUI is a MS application that has a checkbox that will allow you to prevent other applications from stealing focus. Give that a shot- it's worked for me.
posted by Four Flavors at 3:33 PM on November 13, 2009

Have you tried testing to see what happens by starting a new email and just typing gibberish on the keyboard into the body of the new email and watching the screen to see exactly when the mouse "leaves"? That might give you a starting point for what to focus on and it's a very easy test.

If this is the only application in which this happens then you might want to visit MS's http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/downloads site just to see if you need to run service pack updates or fixes.

Some cursory searches online also indicate that it might be the mouse might need to be removed from the Device Manager and then rescanned for new hardware and let it reinstall the mouse.

If it is a mouse that requires a driver, like a Logitech etc. then you might also want to check for a new mouse driver at the manufacturer's web site as well.

Good luck with the troubleshooting.
posted by smallerdemon at 4:25 PM on November 13, 2009