TRACKPOINT FAILS; TOUCHPAD FREEZES;ACTIVE PRO. AUTO-ACTIVATE

[evan]

I've contacted IBM support about this and they have not been helpful. I have no idea what triggered these problems, what is causing them, nor how to resolve them. I've updated all my drivers.

I've had a T42 for a while, and my main problem has been only that that my right hand burns. (Actually this is a substantial problem, but at least I can use the thing with a liner.)

When the problem started, I hadn’t changed anything in my setup, and scans for malware consistently show nothing.

I’ve always used the trackpoint, with the touchpad disabled. I never saw any signs of “IBM Active Protection” against shocks.

Then one day my curser froze and I couldn’t move it with the trackpoint. My workaround was that if I went in and out of suspend mode, it broke the spell and unfroze the cursor. But not always.

Then one day I realized that the touchpad had enabled itself. how nice! So sometimes the touchpad works, and/or occasionally the trackpoint works.

I noticed that the cursor was always freezing every time the thinkpad got a minor shock—but not only then--so I anyway I keep disabling the “ibm active protection,” but it keeps activating itself!

My drivers and devices all have shown as normal. I updated all the drivers, and: same problems.

The ultranav wizard won’t run, and neither will the config utility allow me to enable the trackpoint. Attemping either produces the error message that “trackpoint is disabled from BIOS.” WTF? Sometimes, rarely, it simply re-enables itself.

When the cursor freezes, often I can unfreeze it after pressing “enter” or some other input key, but often not.

It only stays frozen for a few secs, but it happens often and stalls my work.

Thanks for any advice.

--Evan

[christopher_wolf]

That is certainly interesting; when else do you notice the freezes? Is it during periods of high disk activity?

[evan]

Nah, it seems the cursor freezes any old time, even sometimes right after a reboot, with only one program open. (Say IE or Outlook or Word.) I haven't noticed any pattern of incidence with high disk usage.

(I have noticed one other sort of freeze in my system, but it doesn't seem relevant especially because it doesn't affect the cursor. Anyway I'll say what it is.
In Outlook, I right-click an address in order to add it to Contacts, and then for about 8 secs I cannot select any of the dropdown options.)

[christopher_wolf]

Well; I have heard of cursor freezes before, but in those cases, the touchpad moves the cursor while the trackpoint doesn't. Otherwise, I would run a PC-Doctor check of your system.