Insertion point disappears

[Pepper24]

I have a Vaio VPCL14SC1E computer. While I am typing my cursor disappears - usually every minute or two - and I have to click the point I am typing to continue. It seems that the window becomes inactivebecause the blue border becomes pale blue as if it has moved to the background. This happens in all applications and in emails and on the internet. I have changes batteries in both the wireless keyboard (Sony) and the wireless mouse (Logitech) to no effect. The disappearance is preceded by the blue circle flashing on the cursor pointer.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Phil

[Azureal]

Does this occur after some short period of non-use?

If so, it is possibly a feature setting in the mouse driver configuration panel. I have seen it on a few machines over the years. The purpose is to hide the mouse cursor while you are typing to keep it from covering your text, etc.

Maybe you can look in your mouse settings configuration panel for some setting such as this.

[Pepper24]

Thanks Azureal but there doesn't seem to be any changes to make.

I have been told that it may be "focus stealing" by another program trying to connect to update or such like but I have yet to be able to find out how to find the program that is trying to do this. May be you have an idea please?

[sfbp]

Virus scan?

[Azureal]

Sorry Pepper24, I misread your original post. Something is stealing focus of the active window and as you continue to type or what ever, those actions are no longer in the app you intend to use.

I had this exact problem on one of my work PCs a year or so ago. It drove me nuts! It was running Windows XP SP3 but I suspect the same issue could occur on W7 or W8 as well.

If I recall, I had to use "msconfig" and stop one auto-start service at a time, perform a reboot and repeat until the problem went away, it was a pain but I did eventually find the offending application and just uninstalled it.

I agree with sfbp, make sure your Anti-Virus signatures are up to date and perform a full scan to ensure nothing is infecting your system.

Also, take a look in the Control Panel - Installed Programs and look for anything recently installed which may look out of the ordinary. The offending application is something that is loaded as a service and is resident in memory and executing at all times.

The application "msconfig" which you can start by clicking start -> run type in msconfig.exe and hitting return will allow you to disable startup services from loading on boot. I suggest you only turn one off at a time and do not stop any which are clearly Microsoft as some services are just plain required for normal operation.

Your issue is likely something recently installed which you need to identify and remove ...

Good luck!

[Pepper24]

Many thanks Azureal - have found that a Nero 7 process was using a lot of CPU usage when the stealing focus occurred so have updated Nero and am waiting to see if it happens again - fingers crossed this may have been the problem!

If not then back to your suggestions above.

Thanks again