Caret spontaneously moves to cursor position under Remote Desktop

Using Remote Desktop (from Windows 7 to Windows 7), the caret (the vertical bar indicating where text will be inserted) sometimes jumps back to the cursor position. This causes the text I'm typing to be garbled.

For instance, I'm typing this text over such a connection; the cursor is at the start of the sentence I'm typing. At any moment, the text caret may spontaneously jump back to the cursor position, as if I'd clicked there, while I'm just typing, causing the rest of what I type to be inserted at that point, instead of at the end of the sentence.

This is very annoying and the Remote Desktop help or Google don't give me any clues. (I don't know whether it only happens with Windows 7.)

Why is this happening? How to fix it?

reinierpost

Posted 2013-08-03T11:41:04.747

Reputation: 1 904

By chance, are you using a laptop? – Bon Gart – 2013-08-03T14:06:31.527

Yes, I am. And it only appears to happen in full screen mode. – reinierpost – 2013-08-03T21:50:25.087

It actually sounds like you are accidentally hottomg the touchpad with your hand while you are typing. Some newer laptops come with drivers that disable the touchpad while typing. – Bon Gart – 2013-08-04T02:10:33.997

Typed that from the phone, and didn't read it first... "hottomg" is actually "hitting". What you described, is what I used to deal with constantly with my 2004 Toshiba A75. I had to learn to lift my hands when I type to keep from accidentally tapping the touchpad with my right thumb and redirecting the focus of my typing to wherever the I-bar was positioned. – Bon Gart – 2013-08-04T20:07:52.257

Hmmm ... an interesting theory, I will check it, thanks! – reinierpost – 2013-08-05T11:47:58.167

Google found many confirmations, e.g. http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell-latitude-vostro-precision/520315-precision-m4500-touchpad-making-me-crazy.html

– reinierpost – 2013-08-05T19:54:32.393

Well ... that was it! Thank you so much. If you turn it into a real answer, I can accept it. (Simple answers are answers, too.) – reinierpost – 2013-08-08T22:30:55.423

Answers

It sounds like you are accidentally tapping the touchpad with your thumb or the heel of your hand. It's not uncommon, and it is actually apparently common enough of a problem that modern touchpad design has evolved to take it into account. Touchpad hardware companies have in recent years added the feature to disable the touchpad while the keyboard is in use. It doesn't appear to just be a function of software or the drivers, since it isn't a feature that can now be enabled on older hardware.

If you have the most recent mouse/touchpad drivers installed, you can check the mouse properties panel in control panel (or even the touchpad control running in the taskbar if present) to see if you can enable this feature. As in the thread you found, for the Dell Precision M4500, it is called "Hide pointer while typing". It could be called different things, depending on your particular make/model.

Bon Gart

Posted 2013-08-03T11:41:04.747

Reputation: 12 574

These days I have a script to disable the touchpad on Linux.

– reinierpost – 2016-01-12T11:49:14.653

I would suggest that you move your cursor of both your PCs away from the typing space of your program/document while you are typing.
It seems like one of your PCs is generating a mouse click event automatically.

user241704

Posted 2013-08-03T11:41:04.747

Reputation:

From any typing space, to be more exact. Yes, that's the workaround I'm trying to train myself to use now. What I want is a solution. – reinierpost – 2013-08-03T21:51:48.420