Laptop question, specifically keyboard related

[Morgaine]

Hi!  I have a question - I have a HP Pavilion dv7 laptop (using Vista), which has been wonderful so far.  The only problem I'm having, and it is a recent problem, is that while typing in forum boards, emails, any sort of document, my cursor suddenly disappears, and I am having to constantly stop re-click the cursor to where I am typing.  For example, it has done this 7 times just during what I've typed here.

Separately, but I'm thinking is related, while playing World of Warcraft, occasionally the game window will minimize on it's own - I'm thinking that it is keyboard related as well.

Could be some hidden command I've hit on the keyboard causing the problem?  Or something I'm not familiar with at all?  I do know that I'm about to chuck the laptop out of the window! 

I thank you in advance for your help!

[Carbon Dudeoxide]

I have a HP Pavilion dv7 laptop (using Vista), which has been wonderful so far.

The words 'so far' indicates that this is a new laptop, am I correct?

If so, this is a common problem many people have with new laptops.

When you type your response, watch out for your touchpad and be careful not to hit it with your thumb or palm of your hand.

[Morgaine]

Well, it is rather new, I've had it for a few months though.  Your response made me wonder, my touchpad has a lock button, which supposedly disables it, which I keep locked - wonder if that's not working.

Thank you for your response, will do some more checking!

[Carbon Dudeoxide]

Hmmm....A few months old? When did this problem start?

which supposedly disables it, which I keep locked

When typing large amounts of text, try disabling the touch pad with the button and see how your writing fairs.

[Morgaine]

Hmmm....A few months old? When did this problem start?
When typing large amounts of text, try disabling the touch pad with the button and see how your writing fairs.

The problem has just started recently, within the last day or so.

I do keep the touch pad disabled, all the time.  As I'm typing this, I am typing one finger at a time, to ensure no other keys are touched and it did it twice, once I noticed when I hit the space bar, but not everytime I hit the spacebar.  Another time when I hit the 'p' key.  I've also noticed today that when using the scroll wheel on my mouse that it leaves the current page, and I have to click to activate the current page.

[Carbon Dudeoxide]

Interesting....

Does it happen only in the Internet Browser, or in other applications as well?

Any recent downloads/installs/hardware changes?

[Morgaine]

Good question, I just did some testing in a Word document, and it did do it there as well, after I had typed 3 lines.  I use Firefox.

As for downloads, the only recent downloads I can think of are for World of Warcraft add-ons, I use a Curse client, and download updates regularly for the game add-ons.  As my daughter recently moved back home, (and I do wonder if she's done something!) there has been increased traffic to Myspace (blech) and Facebook, etc.

[Morgaine]

Update - ok, ran Search and Destroy, killed a couple of process that were running all the time (one of them being the Curse client), found some unknown thing - deleted - and the problem hasn't come back.

I feel silly for bothering all of you, but I really thank you for your help.

You have a nice forum, I plan to stick around!

[Carbon Dudeoxide]

I'm glad you got it sorted. What was this unknown thing? Any ideas?

[Morgaine]

Well, we killed several processes that were running at start-up, some of them are MSN Messenger, my Blackberry software, my Curse client, which I found was running non-stop, and something called Turbine Download Manager, which I don't even know what that is!

[Carbon Dudeoxide]

and something called Turbine Download Manager, which I don't even know what that is!

Me neither....
http://www.google.com.hk/search?hl=en&q=turbine+download+manager&btnG=Google+Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=