Jumping Cursor

Thank you Obiwan! I was suddenly faced with a mad cursor yesterday for the first time - 2009 mac mini - using the apple trackpad. I had never seen this before. After turning the thing off, removing batteries, changing batteries, reinstalling the OS (snow leopard), trying a restore from time machine from 2 days ago (before it all sarted), nothing was working. It was like watching the IT guys at work remotely controlling my computer. I thought I had a motherboard problem. I had just gotten over having to reinstall the OS after a spotlight perpetual indexing issue and had fear that the poor girl was dying a slow death!

I finally found and read your post (it's been hard to browse when my cursor keeps sending me in unpredictable directions!). I turned off the bluetooth, and the cursor sat silent for thr first time in over 24 hours. I had to find my old usb mouse to do anything now, but couldn't figure out how a bluetooth receiver could be messing things up when the trackpad wasn't even on (I even made sure bluetooth was off on my iphone). Then I remembered a friend of mine had been using the computer for a while a few days ago, and preferred to use a mouse, so I gave her my old rocketfish bluetooth mouse. I guess when she put it away, she forgot to turn it OFF!!! It was sitting in my file cabinet, bluetoothing it's head off. I turned it off, turned the track pad and bluetooth back on, and everything is back to normal. Saved me an embarrassing trip to the apple store. But unfortunately I have now lost my only good reason for getting the new mac mini 😟

My cursor has been jumping around for a week or so, driving me crazy. I don't live near a Mac store. Bought a cheap mouse - I normally use the trackpad - which helped somewhat, but didn't solve the problem.

I followed Chipperz advice, and now it's working perfectly. I'm so relieved!!

This happened to me for a week. I considered sending my 1 year old imac back to mac to have it fixed/replaced. It ended up being my neighbor having a wireless bluetooth keyboard turned on in a drawer under his desk, causing the tab button to continually move my cursor. I had apparently been synching with it rather than my own.

I know this has been kicking around for a while, but I'm going to add to it as it seems to be a continuing problem for Macbooks. I was really afraid I had manage to do the (almost) impossible and got a nasty bug of some kind. I very seldom have my blue tooth turned on, and nothing else plugged in or around that could be causing the problem. After stumbling on to this forum, I started typing without touching the case at all. Cursor started acting like it should, no jumping at all. If I touch the case, it will start jumping again. Also, recently when my Mac gets really hot, the cusor becomes difficult to control. It is not jumping like it did before. It acts more like an old roller ball mouse did when it got dust built up inside it. If I turn Mac off and let it cool down, everything is ok again when I turn it back on. Mac is now 4 years old and I suspect the battery as a few in earlier posts had suggested.

The problem occurred fairly suddenly for me, and REMOVING THE BATTERY solved the problem. I have a Chinese aftermarket battery, and will be purching a new, perhaps OEM battery.

Im having the same problem. Full randomly starts jumping and clicking. I got ******, because it closed a important work process, and I punched the trackpad. It solved the problem for a minute or more... - Might be hardware.

Calgon, I got a new battery after my post last Aug. I have not had the problem since I put in the new one. The battery that was in my Mac when I started having problems was the original from the factory. I replaced with another from Apple. I did learn to save frequently while I was trying to figure out what to do and if I was working on something important, I would shut down & let the computer cool off when it started acting up. Once cooled I was able to do a little more. A real pain, but better than losing something completely! Good Luck.