Hi,

Dell Latitude C600.

I have a problem with the mouse pointer on the above in that it frequently decides to lose the plot and continually move in diagonally down right to left or up left to right until it reaches each corner and stays there, not responding to mouse movements.

I originally had XP installed (laptop is second hand) and when this crashed, rather than reinstall I decided to go Linux. Having had so far two different distros installed, Suse and Slackware, the problem still persists (I thought it was good old Microsofts fault).

Anyone have any ideas as to the problem as it can make the laptop inoperable for the time it takes for the mouse pointer to calm down and respond again.

Thanks
TamTam.

No laptop experience with me, but it sounds like it's just a matter of having the right driver. Have you tried running a command-line X configurator like xorgconfig? If not, I would read the manual on it and have answers ready for all of it's questions before launching it...

If it's an external mouse I'd say take it apart and clean it. Mice are easy, take five minutes to figure out. Yours sounds like a loose wire in the cord or hair/dust in the little circuit board inside the mouse.

I have no idea if this would work on laptops, but every Linux system I've ever run allows the "keyboard numberpad mouse" by hitting Control-Shift-NumLock all at once. On the PC, I get a low beep when I hit this combo to signify it's on and a high beep when I hit it again to turn it off. When activated, the number-pad arrow keys move the mouse pointer, and the "5" button "clicks", while hitting /, *, or - above the number pad turns the "5" key into a left-click, middle-click, or right-click respectively. If there's no way to apply this to your setup, just forget I said it.

Dont know what the problem was but it doesnot matter anymore as some idiot dropped their laptop of a bench and now the display is capute. It was only a small dunt when it hit the floor. Anyone needs spare parts for Dell Lattitude C600

OOPs.

For future reference, this is a common problem on the C600's, the mouse stick is a piece of crap.

You need to disconnect the mouse stick in the middle of the keyboard and use the touch pad. The keyboard is easy to remove, just take out all the screws labled "K" on the bottom. You can either cut the small ribbon cable running to the stick or do as I did and dissassemble the connector and pull out the ribbon cable for the stick.