Dell Insprion 8200 Pointing Stick Problems

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mstep

Dell Insprion 8200 Pointing Stick Problems

Post by mstep »

My clinky old Dell 8200 suffers from the "wandering pointer stick" problem, in which the pointing stick in the center of the keyboard suddenly causes the cursor to wander around the screen and the touchpad to be temporarily ineffective in controlling the cursor position. In Windows XP, there was an option to turn off the pointing stick in the mouse/touchpad functions, and this resolved the problem. I have looked in the Dell bios, and there appears to be no way to turn off the pointer stick there. I can't find any way to turn it off in Helena, which completely replaced my Windows installation. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
MaddogF16

Re: Dell Insprion 8200 Pointing Stick Problems

Post by MaddogF16 »

First thing I'd do is open a terminal and type "lspci" and see if it lists this item as a seperate individual item, then one could possibly move forward at trying to isolate it and any driver that it's using or mapping a way to stop it's activity completely.
mstep

Re: Dell Insprion 8200 Pointing Stick Problems

Post by mstep »

thanks maddog--- just tried that but no joy--- nothing referring to the pointing stick or touchpad for that matter. hoping that someone else here who may have the Inspiron 8200 may have discovered a possible fix.
MaddogF16

Re: Dell Insprion 8200 Pointing Stick Problems

Post by MaddogF16 »

Try lshal and lsusb, I'm assuming it's a Alps glidepoint. In the control center there should be a section for "mouse" where some adjustments can be made. I read that using 3 button emulation may help to use the glidepoint so maybe 2 button emulation will nulify the pointer?
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