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Laptop cursor keeps freezing randomly

Anonymous
2024-05-02T23:23:33+00:00

Hi all,

I am having an issue where my mouse cursor freezes randomly. Sometimes it's for a few seconds, sometimes it appears permanently frozen. While it's frozen everything else works perfectly fine - I can CLICK things with the cursor, and I can use the keyboard to navigate my browser & desktop etc. I just can't move the cursor around.

One sort-of solution I have found is pressing ctrl+alt+del. It seems to kick the cursor into gear again and I am able to use it normally, at least for a couple of minutes, until it inevitably freezes again. But this solution does not work consistently.

Also when this happens, I have noticed 1 issue with the keyboard, which is that I'm unable to long press the arrow keys to quickly navigate the cursor through text (for example if a word has 5 letters i have to press the right arrow 5 times to navigate to the end of the word). So it seems whatever is going on is affecting more than just the mouse?

I am using Windows 10 on a HP laptop, with the integrated Synaptics SMBus Touchpad. I do not currently have access to a wired mouse unfortunately.

Solutions I have tried:

  1. Updating & restarting my laptop.
  2. Updating the touchpad driver
  3. Searching for malware by running a Quick Scan & a Microsoft Defender Offline Scan.

I'd appreciate any help, thank you!

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Devices and drivers

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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  1. Anonymous
    2024-05-03T02:14:47+00:00

    Hi, good day! I'm Jerico T., I understand that you're having some issues right now, I'll do my best to help you with your concern.

    Prior to the issue, are there any recent changes on your computer? Please try to perform the troubleshooting methods below and check if any of the resolves fixes the issue.

    Method 1: Roll-back driver

    1. Open run box by pressing Windows Key + R and type devmgmt.msc then hit enter
    2. Locate and expand Mice and other pointing devices
    3. Right-click on the driver and select Update driver
    4. Select Browse my computer for drivers
    5. Select Let me pick from a list of available drivers on my computer
    6. Select any older driver from the list and click next
    7. Wait for the process to complete, once completed, restart your computer and check if it resolves your issue.

    Method 2: Go to your manufacturer's website

    1. Open run-box by pressing windows key + R, type msinfo32 and hit enter.
    2. Look for your System Model and System Manufacturer, take note of them.
    3. Go to your manufacturer's website and search for your touchpad driver using the information that you noted.
    4. Download and install the touchpad driver, restart your computer and check if the issue still persists.

    Also, kindly try to use an external USB mouse to check if it's a hardware issue.

    Feel free to reach back if you need any further assistance.

    Hope this help. Have a good day.

    Thank you,

    Jerico T.

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-05-12T22:39:33+00:00

    Hi Jerico,

    Thanks so much for your assistance.

    There have been no recent changes to my computer as far as I'm aware.

    I followed your instructions to roll back the driver, and also manually download & install the latest driver from the manufacturer website. Unfortunately neither of these methods has solved the problem.

    As I said in the post I don't currently have access to an external USB mouse. Do you think it's necessary to go buy one to test it? I figured it is likely not a hardware issue since both the mouse and keyboard are affected.

    One thing I forgot to include in the original problem description is that, sometimes when the cursor freezes, it is accompanied by a volume popup banner, as if I had just adjusted the volume (but I didn't). The banner remains frozen for as long as the cursor is and then it disappears when the cursor starts working again. Here is a picture of what it looks like

    Image

    This doesn't happen very often, usually the cursor just freezes and that's it. But just in case it was a browser problem, I tested different ones. When I use Chrome it says "chrome.exe," and when I use Edge it says "edge.exe."

    Thanks again for your help & please let me know if you have further advice!

    Best,

    Brigette

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