{"id":2279,"date":"2010-02-25T16:10:25","date_gmt":"2010-02-25T15:10:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/?p=2279"},"modified":"2010-02-25T16:10:25","modified_gmt":"2010-02-25T15:10:25","slug":"windows-trackpad-annoyances-disappearing-pointer-auto-clicking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/2279-windows-trackpad-annoyances-disappearing-pointer-auto-clicking.html","title":{"rendered":"Windows trackpad annoyances: disappearing pointer, auto clicking"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today the mouse pointer disappeared on my Toshiba laptop running Windows 7 disappeared. I could see that the trackpad or mouse (it made no difference if I plugged in a USB mouse) was working, because I could see mouseover effects as I moved round the screen, but the actual pointer was not visible.<\/p>\n<p>The immediate workaround is to go to Control Panel, search for Mouse, and click Make it easier to see the mouse pointer. Tab to Display Pointer Trails and press the spacebar. This lets you see the mouse at least while it is moving. It disappears again when stationary.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/image16.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border-right-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px\" title=\"image\" border=\"0\" alt=\"image\" src=\"http:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/image_thumb16.png\" width=\"366\" height=\"421\" \/><\/a> <\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s definitely an improvement; but not a complete fix. What is? Well, rebooting; but the problem may recur. Things that might help: tweaking display settings, updating the video driver, avoiding hibernation. If anyone has a definitive fix, I\u2019d love to hear.<\/p>\n<p>While I\u2019m on the subject, here\u2019s another constant annoyance. Every new laptop install of Windows 7 that I\u2019ve seen has a feature called tapping enabled. This converts taps on your touchpad into mouse clicks. It is the first thing I turn off. The reason it drives me crazy is that it always detects unintended taps. The consequences are severe: buttons appear to click themselves, dialogs close unexpectedly, work can even be lost.<\/p>\n<p>Worse still, it is not an easy setting to find. First, you must have the proper driver installed \u2013 usually its a Synaptics driver, though downloaded from your laptop vendor\u2019s site. Second, you have to go to <strong>Control Panel<\/strong>, <strong>Mouse<\/strong>, <strong>Change Mouse Settings<\/strong>, <strong>Advanced tab<\/strong>, click <strong>Advanced Feature Settings<\/strong>, then click <strong>Settings<\/strong> under <strong>Detailed Settings for Touch Pad operations<\/strong>, then uncheck <strong>Enable Tapping<\/strong>. At least, that\u2019s how it is on mine; the path may vary slightly on others.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/image17.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px\" title=\"image\" border=\"0\" alt=\"image\" src=\"http:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/image_thumb17.png\" width=\"406\" height=\"495\" \/><\/a> <\/p>\n<p>This is a setting that should be off by default; and a setting that should be easy to find, not buried under obscure labels like \u201cAdvanced\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>I have lost count of the number of people who have been delighted when I\u2019ve showed them how to disable this feature. \u201cThank you; I wondered why it kept clicking by itself.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today the mouse pointer disappeared on my Toshiba laptop running Windows 7 disappeared. I could see that the trackpad or mouse (it made no difference if I plugged in a USB mouse) was working, because I could see mouseover effects as I moved round the screen, but the actual pointer was not visible. The immediate &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/2279-windows-trackpad-annoyances-disappearing-pointer-auto-clicking.html\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Windows trackpad annoyances: disappearing pointer, auto clicking<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,98],"tags":[611,917,996],"class_list":["post-2279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-microsoft","category-windows-7","tag-mouse","tag-trackpad","tag-windows"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2279\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}