Spasmodic ibook trackpad since 10.2.6

B

bobbyfett

Registered
What I am going to suggest may sound far fetched but I have a strange problem on my dual usb 500 ibook trackpad.

It started when I updated to 10.2.5, for some strange reason the trackpad started to behave strangely in Photoshop 7 and Illustrator 10. When I went to maquee select or drag zoom the pointer kept getting stuck, but only randomly, it seemed fine one second then stuck the next. Everywhere else worked fine it was ok on desktop in all other apps that I used and fine in classic.

Then this morning I thought coo eer misses 10.2.6, thats bound to fix the problem, but unfortunately matters are now worse. Since the restart I now have a pointer that sticks everywhere, it can seem fine for a couple of seconds then not budge until a couple of taps or drags.

This now does this in classic, on restart in classic, as well as from a bootable cd, which gives me the headache...

Can Apple change things below the system in their updates???

My Kensington mouse works fine by the way and yes I have the latest mouseworks drivers and I have tried the trackpad with no devices attached and I have tried the trackpad control panel, given it a good clean, I live in Engalnd so sweat is not a problem...hahhaha...but anymore suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Bobbyfett

iceBook dual usb 500
320mb 10gb hd
 
I've found the trackpad can become a bit unresponsive when the system is using a lot of virtual memory. It seems to get a little jumpy when the load gets a little heavy.

When you next experience this behaviour by the trackpad, pop open a terminal (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal) and type in "top".
On about the fifth or sixth line, there should be a statistic showing the number of PageIns and PageOuts.
PageOuts should be no more than about 25% of PageIns. In fact, the lower the number of PageOuts, the better.
On mine, with 384 mb RAM, the PageOuts are usually less than 1% of the number of PageIns.
If your system has a high rate of PageOuts, you either need to lighten the load by running fewer applications and files at once, or get more memory into your machine. (Or, just put up with a trackpad that gets a bit jerky)
 
Thanks for that advice I'll have a look, it seems to be behaving itself this morning, so perhaps your theory is right and a restart and good nights rest was all thats required.

However I still have a problem in Photoshop with spacebar shortcut for the hand and marquee zoom(+command), which causes the same problem, but i can live with that.

chimps,
bobbyfett
 
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