HELP>>>>> Dell Latitide D510

pavb2

Hi All, can you please help me with my Dell. It was working fine for about 2 years but now when typing the cursor suddenly jumps to random postions (mid sentences different lines) so you constantly have to watch the screen or go back and re type. To type anything more than a few lines it a real pain.
Someone mentioned a hot key, but i cant single out an offending letter, its random.

On a seperate note the laptop gets very hot, slows down and the fan goes into overdrive. Ive just ordered more memory but not sure if this will help? Tks

Alanstrainor

The fans are probably clogged up with dust, best thing to do would be to disassemble it as much as needed to get at the fans and clear the dust. As for the touch pad, it happens on my dell, but i bought a mini wireless mouse which works a treat.

Overheal

aye I just took apart an inspiron last night, never been cleaned in 4 years, I found a whole dust bunny colony. Entire clumps of pet hair. But a quick huff and the fan was good as new. As for the skipping mouse, have you tried defragging your hard drive? Adding Ram wouldnt be a terrible idea but are you running a lot of programs?

stick-dan

I actually just serviced one of these today in work. You would want to make sure that all your drivers are enabled and functioning properly as they should be.

ressem

The Latitudes D series are fairly easy to clean.

You just switch off the machine, take out power and battery.
Let it cool down.
lift the bit of plastic just above the keyboard, take out two or three screws and the keyboard just lifts off exposing the CPU and giving enough access to the fan and heatpipe/sink to brush them down lightly with a cotton bud or lint free cloth. The service manual is http://support.euro.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/latd510/en/sm/index.htm

You can use a program like CPU rightmark to get a better idea of the CPU temperature.

As regards to the cursor issue, any chance of borrowing a USB keyboard and checking whether the problem continues when you're not near the touchpad/track button?

A drifting mouse is a common fault in the C service latitudes, which was most easily fixed by replacing the keyboard if under warranty, or disabling the pointer in the centre of the keyboard using the Synaptics utility or in BIOS. Might be related?

BaconZombie

While the laptop is powered off hold down the "FN" key and while still holding it down press the power button.

It should boot into a diagnostics mode.

pavb2

Thanks will work my way through solutions and let you know:D