Cursor jumping while typing

Question

Cursor jumping while typing

Across several common programs, Safari, Text, Mail, my cursor jumps. This is getting more consistent, every few words (usually on a space) it might jump up a line or two, down a line or two, back up two words, mid word, or highlight a block of text (all on one line) and continue typing where it has jumped. I am clearly not touching the touch pad, there is no mouse. Sometimes it even happens one hand typing. Even while typing this message. There are numerous mentions of similar symptoms on these discussions, but no viable solutions mentioned. I am trying to clearly itemize, this is not just operator error.

Mac Core 2 Duo 2.33 Laptop, Mac OS X (10.5.8), Studio 3

Posted on Oct 20, 2011 10:11 PM

Reply

Answer 1

BDAqua

Level 10

238,925 points

Oct 21, 2011 10:21 AM in response to creativestuff

One thing it could be is check to see if the Battery is bulging at all.

One way to test is to Safe Boot from the HD, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, Test for problem in Safe Mode...

PS. Safe boot may stay on the gray radian for a long time, let it go, it's trying to repair the Hard Drive

Reboot, test again.

If it only does it in Regular Boot, then it could be some hardware problem like Video card, (Quartz is turned off in Safe Mode), or Airport in 10.4 & below, or 3rd party add-on, Check System Preferences>Accounts>Login Items window to see if it or something relevant is listed.

Check the System Preferences>Other Row, for 3rd party Pref Panes.

Also look in these if they exist, some are invisible...

/private/var/run/StartupItems

/Library/StartupItems

/System/Library/StartupItems

/System/Library/LaunchDaemons

/Library/LaunchDaemons

Reply

Answer 2

carl81

Level 1

10 points

Dec 29, 2011 8:59 AM in response to creativestuff

Try removing your battery and running on only AC power.

Reply

Answer 3

Mar 14, 2013 11:17 AM in response to creativestuff

None of the other suggestions worked for me. I have been having this problem for several weeks now with many programs that involve typing text. I just figured out the problem so I am passing it on to you all. I shut down Parallels and went back to Word and found that the problem is gone! I use all the latest versions so perhaps the bug that I am experiencing comes with the latest update to Parallels since I did not have this problem until fairly recently. Hope this helps. What a nasty problem!

Reply