dodgy trackpoint on dell latitude c600

My C600’s trackpoint mouse has a tendency to cause the mouse cursor to drift annoyingly at random. I’ll bump it and the cursor will be stuck in the bottom left corner for 5 minutes, or I’ll hit G, H or B on the keyboard and it’ll freak out and run away, it has happened completely at random. I think it’s a common problem; mine does it, and so did one that came into work the other week.

The obvious fix is to turn the trackpoint off (who the hell uses them anyway?). To do that, you need the proper touchpad drivers – get them from Dell here (Dell’s generic driver download page is here, if you have a different model).

Thing is, the driver application only runs per-user once you’ve logged in. The trackpoint can still play havoc at the login screen, especially if you use the Welcome screen. To fix that, just set SynTPLpr.exe to run as a scheduled task on system startup:

Just remember to untick all the stupid defaults so it runs even if you’re on batteries (and thus probably particularly reliant on the touchpad):

This entry was posted on Friday, September 14th, 2007 at 18:56 and is filed under techsup, windows, work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.