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Q: When I use my laptop, at times the curser will jump around on its own, particularly when typing emails.  I will look up and be typing in the address bar or nowhere.  It doesn’t always happen-sometimes it is worse than other times.  I have a Toshiba that is a little over a year old.  My old laptop did the same thing.  I was told by another “geek” that this is just the nature of the beast?   Is that so?

– Emmy H.
Alpine, Texas

A: I’ve encountered this exact problem before, and it surely is NOT simply “the nature of the beast,” Emmy, unless the “beast” is you.  You don’t believe me?  Okay, before you read the rest of my answer to you, I want to you use your laptop exactly like you always do, but take note of where you happen to leave the mouse cursor right before you start typing.  Then notice where your typing winds up when it “jumps around”.  Okay, stop reading right here, and go try it.

The typing wound up in the same place as the mouse cursor, didn’t it?  You’ll find that it will always happen that way, because what’s happening is that the heel of your hand is contacting the touchpad while you type, and your touchpad is translating that into a single left mouse click, which does exactly what it would have done if you clicked it on purpose: it moves the input focus (the technical term for “where the typing occurs in Windows”) to the location of the click.  How to prevent this?  First, try and train your hands to keep them off the touchpad while typing.  If you can’t do that, many laptops have a handy button right next to the touchpad that disables it on demand.  But you probably need the touchpad, so if you don’t want to be constantly turning it on and off, you could try going into the control panel and decreasing the touchpad’s sensitivity.  There’s probably also an option to disable the “single-tap for left mouse click” option, if you don’t use it.  Worst case (and I’ve actually done this in the past) cut up an index card to cover the touchpad.

Q: I have a problem I cannot find an answer to. When I click on a link to an image, coupon in an email, or a link in Facebook, all I get is a blank white page. I have looked in tools-internet options and cannot figure out how to fix this problem. I especially want to be able to click on images in Ancestry.com and it just keeps coming up blank white page. Help!

– Pat B.
Fort Walton Beach, Florida

A: There are so many possible things that could cause this, and so many potential fixes that it’s about impossible to narrow things down without some hands-on time on your machine.  However, in the interest of trying to get you back on track, I offer this link to a Microsoft Support page for a similar problem:  tinyurl.com/ysazdw.  The page contains advice, and a link to Microsoft FixIt 50191, which is a semi-automated wizard that will attempt to implement a fix for you.