Can't control cursor, moves by itself whenever i type...just replaced palm rest at Dell's advice, worked fine for 5 minutes now just as bad as before

hi there you probably have the same problem as me with my dell m5040, part of the palm rest shorts with the mouse and becomes active so when your palm or wrist touches it the mouse icon moves and jumps.
martyn

Well, technically it is not moving it backwards, it is moving the cursor to wherever the 'pointer' is.
You need to STOP resting your palm(s) on the Touchpad.

When you touch it, it will move the cursor to wherever the 'pointer' is....which is likely where you started typing.

You can also turn-off the touch-pad if you will be doing lots of typing. This is done by pressing [Fn] and [F3].

Go here http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/index.aspx?c=us&cs=555&l=en&s=biz and download the latest drivers for your mouse / keyboard.

This happens for 1 of 2 reasons: 1. Either your wrist hits the mouse pad and that makes the cursor move
2. If your mouse moves all the time without your control you need to have your palm rest replaced
When this works vote me a 10

Go to Control Panel, Mouse, click on Pointer Options tab and uncheck Hide Pointer while typing. This fixed it for me.

Be careful you aren't inadvertently resting your thumb or palm on the touchpad (it doesn't care if you're typing or not - if you touch it, the mouse will move)

clean mouse out or go into mouse properties and see if the properties ar right

Does the cursor jump around when your hands are nowhere near the touchpad? The touchpads are heat and pressure sensitive. I personally have very warm (and sometimes sweaty) hands. I have this problem often when working on laptops. If I hover my hands over the pad, it causes the mouse to move. I've had to take a business card, put tape on one side of it, and use it as a flip-cover for the touchpad on most of my laptops. If the cursor moves around when you're nowhere near the laptop, then you may want to try disabling the pointing stick (if it has one). I've had several clients with laptops where the pointing stick mouse control go crazy and move and click on things.

You need to replace either the Palm Rest, keyboard or both.

Are you using windows vista? If so, that is a common problem with vista. The reason is the driver for the touchpad. Your palm may brush up against the touchpad while you are typing which moves the cursor all around. You can open up the properties for the touchpad (in control panel or by right clicking the icon next to the clock that corresponds to the touchpad and selecting properties), and play around with the sensitivity and palmtouch options in it as well as make sure you have the most up to date drivers available if you are using vista. Oh and one more thing, please give this solution a fixya rating. Thanks!