Erratic Mouse cursor when using laptop touchpad

BattleWorthy

Estimable
Mar 15, 2015
2
0
4,510
Hopefully someone can shed some light on my issue. Recently I noticed that touchpad on my Dell Inspiron 3421 (Windows 8 64bit) becoming erratic when I plug in something on any of its USB ports as if somthing is triggering the problem. I tried using an external mouse and it doesnt appear to be exhibiting the erratic cursor issue but when I switch back to the touchpad it does the same thing again. If you restart the pc a couple of times the problem disapears and again when I tried plugging in the USB cable from my printer it goes back on being erratic. I also tried several devices and the other USB ports available and its still showing the same problem. It doesnt matter if your connected via power supply adapter or on battery it both manifests the same. I tried updating the touchpad driver to see if that would change anything but no changes. Im going to try to find any update for the USB drivers to see if does anything... Has any one experienced this? Any help would do... Thanks!
 

planesman22

Estimable
Mar 14, 2015
51
0
4,610
I have this problem when something metallic or magnetic in nature appears close to my touch pad(The cord of my earbuds that is wrapped around a length condenser do this). I believe is hardware based and there isn't anything you can do software based. Do try Driver Booster to update all your drivers.
 

BattleWorthy

Estimable
Mar 15, 2015
2
0
4,510


Thanks, I'll try that hopefully it will function.. I'm even going to restore back to factory settngs to see if it changes anything its just effin frustrating since I don't use this laptop often and would give it to my nephew to use.. darn USB!
 

planesman22

Estimable
Mar 14, 2015
51
0
4,610
If this is a persisting problem, and you probably thought about the suggestion I will offer here, why not use a wireless USB mouse and disable the mouse pad completely?

However, before that becomes our final proposition, I cannot deny the fact that Microsoft likes to release software updates that make things fail/break and I have experienced multiple cases where Windows will release an unfortunate update that disables/juke the input devices so doing a full out windows update(Since windows will correct their mistakes fairly quickly after the complaints roll in) isn't a bad idea.