Cursor Cursed?

[Jeff Corey]

Suddenly my cursor is cursed. It keeps on spontaneously jumping around, which mades editing, etc. almost impossible.
Help, anyone?
When I tried to edit "mades", clicking on the d didn't work and the arrow advanced to the end of the message.

[Wudang]

An optical mouse can do that on a dirty surface.

[Jeff Corey]

Mouseless laptop, with the touch sensitive pad.

[Denver]

Have you spilled anything recently?
Or dropped the keyboard?

Do you have cats?

[arthwollipot]

Reboot. Everything works better after a reboot.

I'm serious. I'm speaking from close to 15 years experience in IT Support. Reboot.

[Jeff Corey]

I already tried rebooting.
No spillage, not dropped, cats know better.
It's weird. I first noticed it in Solitaire. The little bugger would start moving across the screen fron left to right, jump down, goifromleft to right again and then repeat.
There's a ghost in the machine.

[Wudang]

Try giving the touchpad a clean. Otherwise some suggestions here
http://forums.cnet.com/5208-6132_102-0.html?threadID=92767

[Christian Klippel]

Static charge. I had that effect on a Laptop as well. Whenever i had underpants with plastic fibers, a normal jeans, and dry weather, the touchpad did go havoc.

These things work capacitive, usually. So any external static field can give it false readings. The charge involved my not be high enough to give you a buzz when you touch grounded metal, but it's enough to confuse the pad. Also, it seems to happen more with cheap pads than with the better ones.

Also, the charge may "stick" to the plastic coating/surface of the pad, so it may take a while to disappear.

Greetings,

Chris