Mysterious scroll bar appears when I use two fingers on the trackpad
September 21, 2013 3:21 AM   Subscribe

I apologize for the sheer banality of this question, but when I use two fingers to scroll through a web page using my work-supplied Thinkpad T430, a small floating scrollbar appears. When I place my pointer over it, I get that rotating circle "busy signal." It's always there, like a fly on a screen door. How do I get rid of it?

I've been googling this off and on for the last week. I just got this laptop from work, I'm overseas, sick, exhausted, and can't martial the cognitive resources to solve this relatively simple problem. Thank you for your suggestions. Here is what the thing looks like:

annoying grey thing
posted by craniac to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)
 
I believe that's just an icon that appears to let you know that you are in scrolling mode instead of regular mouse mode.
posted by gjc at 3:26 AM on September 21, 2013 [2 favorites]


It might be adjustable in Control Panel => Mouse.
posted by lumensimus at 4:13 AM on September 21, 2013


I agree with gjc. This happens (annoyingly) on Mrs L's Toshiba Satellite L645 with Windows 7. Do not seem to be able to remove it :(
posted by lungtaworld at 7:39 AM on September 21, 2013


Response by poster: I am not entirely certain, but the mystery bar seems to only show up in firefox.

The control panel-->Mouse option was the first thing I checked.

The touchpad settings were my second destination. Now I suspect it is something generated by Firefox. When the mystery bar appears and I switch to Chrome or Microsoft Word, a ghost image of it remains.
posted by craniac at 8:35 AM on September 21, 2013


Response by poster: Disabling "smooth scrolling" in Firefox did not make it go away, but it did make the little grey box show up more immediately, as opposed to lagging. When I mouse over the little gray box I get the hourglass.
posted by craniac at 8:38 AM on September 21, 2013


I got rid of that annoying icon on my ThinkPad with a program called two-finger-scroll. I downloaded it so that I could do a two-finger-tap for right click (like on a Macbook) -- the disappearance of that icon was just a nice side effect!
posted by RandallStanhope at 9:35 AM on September 21, 2013 [2 favorites]


Another agree with gjc. My x230 does the same thing, I think putting the cursor on the bar just confuses the stupid software. I just ignore the silly thing as it disappears as soon as I stop scrolling. But I very seldom use the touchpad because honestly for all that I love most of everything about my x230, the touchpad is awful.
posted by monopas at 12:22 PM on September 21, 2013


Response by poster: It's like one of those floaties in your eye, or becoming aware of being able to see your nose. I tried two-finger scroll but no luck. I'll go to the Thinkpad forums and seek relief.
posted by craniac at 7:49 PM on September 21, 2013


Best answer: Ok, I figured it out. What was happening was that the scrollbar thingy wasn't properly disappearing. The old version of it would stick to the screen. I googled something and found the newest drivers at the Lenovo Japan site. Now the annoying little bar politely disappears when I'm not two-finger scrolling. Hooray!

Here is the US site for the drivers. I'm assuming they are the same as the ones I downloaded. I googled "lenovo thinkpad ultranav drivers" to find it.
posted by craniac at 10:25 AM on September 26, 2013


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