Friday, May 12, 2006

Off Topic: Keyboard Question

Something's been driving me nuts since I've been using this laptop and wondered if any of you knew what I'm doing to cause it?

I'll be typing along and all of the sudden the cursor will shift to somewhere behind where I'm typing. Sometimes it will suddenly appear a sentence or two behind the one I'm typing and sometimes it ends up in the paragraph above.

It's happened probably ten times already, just in typing this. Not sure that it's happening if I don't miss any keys but, if I don't catch it right away, I end up typing in a different line and have to remove a few letters and reposition the cursor and start again.

Seems to me this happens on my other computer sometimes, as well, but not anywhere near as much. Anyone know what might be causing this, or what key combos do this? Interesting in that, just now, all of the sudden a numbered list was created that I didn't ask for and I had to remove it.

I suspect I'm inadvertantly using some keyboard shortcuts but can't figure just what exact keys are doing it and how to deactivate them.

2 Comments:

At 8:41 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

You might be accidently brushing the touch pad thing with your sleeve. The newer laptops have really sensitive touch pads. There might be a way to adjust it by making it less sensitive. Is it a mac or pc?

 
At 8:56 AM, Blogger Fred Mangels said...

Thanks for the suggestion. This is a PC.

I think I found the problem. Funny how we ask everyone a question rather than trying MS Help.

Problem was I inadvertantly activated "Sticky Keys". Sticky Keys is apparently one of those applications for handicapped folks and others that can't hold down more than one key at a time.

So, you do keyboard shortcuts by pressing a couple keys at once. Sticky Keys lets you do the shortcuts by pressing one key at a time. So, I'd be typing along and didn't realize the key combo was being used as a shortcut.

Seems to work right now, although I just had the cursor end up above this paragraph. The main problem, right now, is this comments window has closed about a dozen times while typing this.

What's that all about? A different problem? Oh well, seems better. Thanks for the help.

 

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