Drifting pointer on Dell D800 running LL 3.4

[JanetBiggar]

Yet another question!

I had this same issue when this computer was running Win XP and I applied a fix in Win XP at that time (I've forgotten exactly what it was, however moot point as now it's running LL 3.4).

I tried the suggestions in this link: https://cederlys.wordpress.com/2010/07/1...in-ubuntu/

I went through the steps it mentioned and got the info on my pointer:
AlpsPS/2 ALPS DualPoint Stick id=12 so I put the necessary info from this line into the line he states in his blog.

There was NO change, in fact it seemed worse.  Regardless of whether I use a USB mouse or the trackpad at times the pointer works fine then suddenly it will drift off to the upper left and sit in the corner and not budge.  I'm unable to get it to move either with the external mouse or the track pad.  It will remain unresponsive for a minute or so then return to normal function.  It's liveable albeit annoying 

Any suggestions?

I did make a system report early this morning although I'm unsure whether it uploaded to the database.  I saved it on the computer and if it will provide any info I can add it to this thread.

[Scott(0)]

Hello

Have you tried the BIOS? Sometimes the trackpad and/or point-stick can be disabled there.

[Scott(0)]

Another try...

On my laptop (Dell Latitude E6500) I found disable options here:

Start Menu > All > Mouse and Touchpad > Mouse and Touchpad window opens > Devices Tab > Device Field

The Device Field allows me to choose different devices and enable/disable them.

[trinidad]

There are at least four different Deb packages for mouse/touchpad control. I'm not sure what machine you're on that has this problem so I can't comment on what to do. Sometimes on older machines this is caused by workspace window wrapping. Set the desktop to only run one DE workspace.


TC 

[JanetBiggar]

Thanks for the suggestions. To clarify this particular laptop is about 10 years old, a dell Latitude D800 RAM 756 mb (or something like that)l HD of 40 Gb.

Trinidad I appreciate your comments, but googling the various terms I think what you’re thinking of is way out of the league of what this computer can do.

I’ll check out Scott’ s suggestions as it seems more basic.

[trinidad]

I'm not on LL right now but somewhere in Settings there is simple GUI menu for workspaces up to four. Set it to one.

TC

[JanetBiggar]

Great, it's not perfect, however it is much better and manageable.  It no longer exhibits the erratic fast drift to the upper right corner at all.  It is a bit sticky at times where it will not move, but within about 15-20 secs it frees up again and I can move it.  Funny enough it does this whether the USB mouse is plugged in or not.

So essentially I did what Scott suggested  - when into the mouse area from settings and disabled the Dual Stick and then I also went into the workspace area as Trinidad suggested and went down to 1 workspace (it was set to 2).  I've only just done Trinidad's suggestion so will play around and see if the slight stickiness perhaps resolves completely.

Nonetheless FAR BETTER - Thank you