Laptop Cursor Clicks By Itself w/o External Mouse & Touchpad Disabled

[franklyfresh]

Hi,

I have a mysterious ghost laptop that likes to click by itself. I have tried disabling the touchpad thinking that I may accidentally engaged it while typing, but no cigar. I have tried disconnecting my external mouse thinking that the firmware may be outdated or the hardware may be broken, but no cigar. I have tried disabling the touchpad as well as leaving my external mouse disconnected, but still no cigar.

If I leave my cursor idle on a video, with the touchpad disabled and no external accessories attached, the cursor will keep on clicking the video by itself, playing and pausing the video continuously. This is an omnipresent problem, I just used a video to test if the cursor was still clicking independently.

Not sure what to do with this... My laptop is running Windows 7 Ultimate on an Acer Aspire 7552G-6436.

 

[chugot9218]

Is it a legal copy of Win 7? If so, I would try a repair install after checking for viruses.

 

[franklyfresh]

Hi Chugot,

Thanks for the response, much appreciated. Yes it is an authentic Windows 7. I am running a full system scan with avast! right now but I am not sure what that will yield.

Could you elaborate a little more on the repair install? Reinstall my OS? Or use the OS recovery system?

 

[chugot9218]

Windows will let you do a "repair install" which basically re-installs all the operating system files while leaving all your accumulated data and program installations intact. It sounds like it could be a corrupted driver somewhere, was there any physical damage to the laptop? I was thinking there could be some internal hardware issue related to the touchpad but if you can disable it and you still get the effect I am unsure. And if it is not hardware it is likely software or OS related. Does Acer have an installed utility that manages the touchpad? I know my dell laptop had a program that controlled the touchpad and I was only able to access advanced preferences like disabling the pad and disabling the "touch-click" of the pad (my palm would always hit the pad while I was typing causing the cursor to click wherever it happened to be, disrupting my typing) from that utility.

 

[Proximon]

Is it a legal copy of Win 7? If so, I would try a repair install after checking for viruses.

Why would you ask that? Do you randomly walk up to people in the parking lot and ask if they stole the car they are driving? :lol:

I really would suspect something simple. Dirt in the keyboard perhaps.

Usually malware will act a bit more deliberately, but it can't be ruled out, even if Avast returns a negative. So check with a second program as well.

Does this behavior start immediately after a full reboot? If so, it's either a very fundamental corruption of the OS, which seems unlikely, or a hardware problem.

 

[chugot9218]

Why would you ask that? Do you randomly walk up to people in the parking lot and ask if they stole the car they are driving? :lol:

I really would suspect something simple. Dirt in the keyboard perhaps.

Usually malware will act a bit more deliberately, but it can't be ruled out, even if Avast returns a negative. So check with a second program as well.

Does this behavior start immediately after a full reboot? If so, it's either a very fundamental corruption of the OS, which seems unlikely, or a hardware problem.

No, but if someone walked up to me in a parking lot and asked me if I wanted to buy their brand new BMW for 200 bucks and my shoes, I am going to question their motives/sanity! Plus, Mr. Mod , isn't it against the rules to help anyone with pirated/illegal software? I was just performing my due diligence . And, a lot of people mention the torrent copies of Win 7 Ultimate to be quite filled with viruses.

 

[franklyfresh]

Windows will let you do a "repair install" which basically re-installs all the operating system files while leaving all your accumulated data and program installations intact. It sounds like it could be a corrupted driver somewhere, was there any physical damage to the laptop? I was thinking there could be some internal hardware issue related to the touchpad but if you can disable it and you still get the effect I am unsure. And if it is not hardware it is likely software or OS related. Does Acer have an installed utility that manages the touchpad? I know my dell laptop had a program that controlled the touchpad and I was only able to access advanced preferences like disabling the pad and disabling the "touch-click" of the pad (my palm would always hit the pad while I was typing causing the cursor to click wherever it happened to be, disrupting my typing) from that utility.

Shouldn't be any recent physical damage to the laptop. Not too sure about an application that manages the touchpad, I disabled it with fn key + f7. I'll run the repair install after avast! and another program scan.

Why would you ask that? Do you randomly walk up to people in the parking lot and ask if they stole the car they are driving? :lol:

I really would suspect something simple. Dirt in the keyboard perhaps.

Usually malware will act a bit more deliberately, but it can't be ruled out, even if Avast returns a negative. So check with a second program as well.

Does this behavior start immediately after a full reboot? If so, it's either a very fundamental corruption of the OS, which seems unlikely, or a hardware problem.

My keyboard is pretty filthy, but wouldn't that be a moot factor if the touchpad is disabled?

Can you recommend another program for me to run in addition to avast?

I will reboot the computer after the virus scan and report back.

 

[chugot9218]

Try MalwareBytes in safe mode.

 

[Proximon]

Malwarebytes sounds fine. AVG is another. Even MS Security essentials.

What might produce a Lclick like your mouse depends on the program running and the particular laptop. Enter or spacebar will do this in some instances. Take for instance your desktop. If you tab through the icons and select one, hitting enter will work just like clicking it.

 

[franklyfresh]

I ran the antivirus softwares and all three I ran came up with only false positives. Upon reboot, the problem does not occur immediately, however, the independent clicking occurs intermittently anyways.

 

[Proximon]

I would try a fresh install of Win 7 then. If that fails to resolve it, the next step is probably a bit of dis-assembly and cleaning.

 

[KrEEpTiP]

I have an acer aspire 5745G laptop, all factory bought hardware and software and it has done the same thing since very early on. At first i thought i was just bumping the trackpad randomly as i was new to laptops but after a few weeks of modifying my typing style i quickly realised that was not the cause. Like yours, mine is completely random. Sometimes it will not happen for 15 minutes of typing and then other times it will happen 10 times in 10 minutes. In fact it just did it then and my system was idle and my hands nowhere near the pad or keyboard.

It has caused me much frustration, so i will attempt the above suggested remedies but if you find a successful solution i would much appreciate how you achieved resolution Franklyfresh. If i fix mine i'll be sure to post.

 

[franklyfresh]

I have an acer aspire 5745G laptop, all factory bought hardware and software and it has done the same thing since very early on. At first i thought i was just bumping the trackpad randomly as i was new to laptops but after a few weeks of modifying my typing style i quickly realised that was not the cause. Like yours, mine is completely random. Sometimes it will not happen for 15 minutes of typing and then other times it will happen 10 times in 10 minutes. In fact it just did it then and my system was idle and my hands nowhere near the pad or keyboard.

It has caused me much frustration, so i will attempt the above suggested remedies but if you find a successful solution i would much appreciate how you achieved resolution Franklyfresh. If i fix mine i'll be sure to post.

Unfortunately it was the driver software of the mouse itself that needed to be re-installed, not the laptop software. Maybe that could be your case? Goodluck.