Problem solved

I keep hearing from people who threaten to drop their computers from a great height. Read on before you do that. There might be a quick and easy way to make that machine stop annoying you.

 

Last week I was working with a customer who has a beautiful, fast Ultrabook. (An Ultrabook is a high-end sub-notebook with an Intel processor.) I told him I thought it was a great computer. He told me he was ready to throw it off the balcony.

The problem was that the cursor kept jumping around. When he answered an email or wrote a document, he got word salad. That behaviour created even graver problems in Excel spreadsheets.

This is a really common problem. Generally the culprit is the touchpad. That’s the square or rectangular part of the laptop’s keyboard that acts like a mouse when you drag or tap with your fingers. Most touch typists drag or tap the heel of their hand on the touchpad without even realizing it. The mouse moves just like it’s supposed to, and havoc ensues.

The easiest way to resolve this problem is to use a wireless mouse and disable the touchpad. (Uninstalling the touchpad drivers is NOT a good idea. If you ever forget to bring your mouse, you’re going to be in a world of hurt.) It’s easy to disable your touchpad and enable it again if you need it.

One way is to use the keyboard. Every laptop I’ve ever seen used the Fn (called “Function”) key plus F keys (the top row of keys) to toggle functions on and off. On my little netbook, the Fn + F3 combination toggles the touchpad off and on. Your laptop might use a different combination. Look for an icon that resembles a touchpad, and try that key with the Fn key. See what happens. (Have a mouse handy, though!)

You might also use Settings. Visit the control panel, and find the settings for Mouse. If you have a Synaptics touchpad, you’ll see a red icon there which will let you control the touchpad settings, including disabling it.

If you actually want to use the touchpad, disabling it isn’t an option. But you can install a little free utility called TouchFreeze. It will disable the touchpad while you are typing text and automatically enable it again when you stop typing. It works great on laptops running Windows 7 and Windows 8.x. It works on most Vista laptops, too. You can download it here: http://code.google.com/p/touchfreeze/.

I received this email from a reader:

Cate, can you help me?

I've got a new laptop with Windows 8.1 … but just now I opened my computer and the background of everything is black.

Instead of my files opening with the usual white background (I'm using colors for correcting different categories), it's all black and white - no colored fields or cells showing.

I opened Firefox and got a message that I was in High something but that only came up once so I can't say for sure what it said. I went into settings - personalization, but again I don't know what I should do there.

I'm ready to toss it out the window.

 

The part about Firefox helped me figure out the problem. The computer was set to High Contrast Mode. This is sometimes helpful to people with vision impairments, but generally not useful for most people. The easiest way to get back to normal is to press the Left Alt + Left Shift + PrintScreen keys simultaneously.

That will either just change back to the regular way, or it will pop up a box asking you if you want to go back to the regular way. (You do, so pick the most appropriate answer.)

This works in Windows Vista through 8.1.

 

Got a cool tip? Got a weird problem? Send email to [email protected] and I’ll share the solutions in future columns.

 

Do you need help with your computer? I'm here to help you and your home or business computer get along!

Cate Eales runs Computer Care Kelowna (http://computercarekelowna.com/) a mobile service helping home users and businesses get along with their computers. To arrange an appointment phone her at 250-764-7043. Cate also welcomes your comments and suggestions. Send email to [email protected].

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This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.