Tuesday, August 10, 2010

I turned my computer off yesterday morning before I left for work. Everything was working. When I got home last night, it came on all right, except the cursor was missing. Have you ever tried to get anywhere without having something to click on? Oh, yeah, if I finally got something to open, lines would highlight as I moved the arrow keys but that was dicey.

I rebooted.

I rebooted again.

I unplugged everything, went in to fix my dinner, then came back and put it back together and rebooted again. No change. I put in one of the disks to my MS office program which has a "repair" feature - providing it automatically goes to that choice, which it didn't.

My laptop was at work so I couldn't even try to google for a solution. I gave up.

So I googled today at work. At home, I could bring up the control box that say's "restore system" but none of my clicks activated anything. Almost all the instructions I find talk about doing this or doing that - but I CANNOT manipulate at all because the stupid cursor is MISSING! The hot keys only work if you have a cursor to move. But I did get the idea to uninstall and reinstall the program. Of course, if I have to click on something, I'm just SOL.

I was just thinking at the weekend how lucky I was to have had this computer since 2002 and no major problems. I replaced the keyboard. That's it. I backup my photos and other files and delete the photo files once I do since they are big space hogs. There's plenty of room left.

What I'm trying to say is that my posts may be sketchy until I figure this out. I can post from work but without my home computer, I have no way to add pix as the scanner and camera feed into that computer.

And I just KNOW it's a simple fix. If I could figure it out. My current keyboard has some hot keys on the outside edges. Sometimes the cats climb up there and accidently hit a key. That's how I found out about the "mute" key. I'd like to think it's just one of those buttons but I've tried them all and nothing was restored. Except sound. The mute button HAD been hit so maybe they did hit something. I can't always understand what those icons mean. LOL!

And I'm taking my little laptop home tonight so I can read mail but it's not terribly convenient to use so I mostly just read. Oooooh...just had a thought. If I plug my keyboard into that computer and lose the cursor there too, that means it IS in the keyboard.

So maybe you'll see me and maybe you won't!

7 comments:

  1. Good luck! I hope it something as simple as the keyboard.

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  2. Sounds like evil computer gremlins to me. Hate those guys! LOL

    You've got a plan and I hope it works.

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  3. if you press the windows key (the one with the flag on it) does using the up and down arrow keys move the highlight? You can move around most windows with the tab key, you just have to be able to figure out which place is active. I have somethign similar happen a year or so ago, but I have forgotten how I fixed it, except that i had to use those items to do it.

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  4. My son did something similar to me. He did hit the hotkeys which locked the keyboard cursor/mousepad on my laptop. I unlocked it by hitting th FN key and F9. It took me a few hours to figure it out. When I did I was a little embarrassed with how simple it was to fix. I don't know if it's the same thing but hey it can't hurt to try right?

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  5. That's the problem with computers, its always a simple fix but no-one knows the secret. I'm surprised there's not a website dedicated to some of these issues. Kinda like a what to do when....

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  6. What Operating System are you using? I googled here and found that enabling the "mouse trails" in the mouse properties in the Control Panel might fix it. I would think that it may be your mouse that isn't working. The cursor may not appear if the mouse doesn't work. If I was in your shoes, I would have reinstalled the OS by this time. Hope you get your computer up and running. Computer problems are a real PITA!

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  7. Oh, before I forget, you can move around the screen using the arrow keys and the tab button. If you look closely, you should see what you have selected by looking for a dotted rectangle around the icon, menu item, or window tab. Hope this helps.

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