Strange keyboard/trackpad behavior on MacBook Pro with XP

A

atkretsch

Registered
Sorry if there's a more appropriate place for this (or if it's been posted before - I searched but didn't find anything), but over the last few days I've started seeing some weird (and annoying behavior) with my MacBook Pro.

I'm running Windows XP (more precisely, I'm dual-booting OSX and XP using BootCamp and rEFIt), and everything was great for months, but over the last few days, my mouse cursor suddenly slows down to a crawl. It isn't that my speed settings are changing (I checked the Mouse settings under system), it's just not reacting as quickly to my finger moving as it should. What's more, the Windows right-click workaround (two-finger tap + click) doesn't work once this starts happening - it just causes the cursor to jump around. Finally, once it's in this state, functions like PageUp, PageDown, and even normal up-down scrolling don't work right - when I hit down, it just scrolls right back to the top (think of if you're pressing page-down while someone else is holding down "Home") or vice versa. It doesn't matter what application I'm using, either - everything from Firefox to the Windows "shut down/restart/stand by" list box exhibits this behavior! It makes the computer almost unusable!

The good news is that restarting or going into standby will fix the problem, at least temporarily - when the system comes back up, the mouse is moving snappily and the keyboard is behaving fine. Still, it's extremely frustrating when it happens, which is at least once or twice per day.

Anyone have ANY clue what could cause this (or better yet, what could FIX this)? I haven't installed any new software or hardware lately, except I installed XP SP3 - but this was DEFINITELY happening before that install, and has happened since, so it's unrelated.

Side note: I haven't seen this behavior in OSX, but I rarely use OSX lately (I'm 99.999% in Windows) since XP is what I need to use for work.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Andy
 
Thanks for the tip, but even after following those instructions, the computer behaves normally for a while and then reverts to the same erratic behavior (I had to switch to a different PC just to write this post). Any other advice would be helpful...
 
Then try this. Go to Software Update and see if there is an update because when SP3 came out Apple put out a Boot Camp Update.
 
So, this issue has continued to happen, even after installing the Boot Camp 2.1 update. Everything I read about it says it's "important" to install the update before installing Windows SP 3. I definitely did this in reverse order - could that be my problem? Does anyone know the specific reason 2.1 has to be installed before service pack 3?

Also, another side note - I've also started noticing that my keyboard and trackpad completely freeze momentarily somewhat randomly. It's typically only a few seconds, but sometimes up to a minute. I'm not ever doing anything CPU-intensive, and overall system performance is good. Not sure if it's related to the main problem, as it started happening much later.

Thanks again for any help...
Andy
 
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