[Janis]

I did a clean install of XP on an old! Dell laptop thinking that might clear any glitches. It didn't take care of the mouse/cursor problem. The cursor works for awhile and then wanders off and will not respond to a mouse or the touchpad commands. I don't find any conflicts in Device Manager. Is this just old age or is it fixable?

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Which particular model of Dell laptop is it please.
Have you tried disabling the touchpad and replacing the batteries in the mouse?
After the clean install of XP did you install the Dell drivers as required by Dell systems, if not you can have issues;
http://support.dell....4&isLegacy=true

[phillpower2]

Which particular model of Dell laptop is it please.
Have you tried disabling the touchpad and replacing the batteries in the mouse?
After the clean install of XP did you install the Dell drivers as required by Dell systems, if not you can have issues;
http://support.dell....4&isLegacy=true

[Janis]

The Dell is an Inspiron 8200. I thought about the drivers and went to the Dell site. The only one I could find was for the touchpad. When I installed that I lost (deleted?) the PS2 mouse and I had to do another install of XP. So I have the PS2 mouse and the touchpad works also when it wants to. But then it starts wandering off and nothing seems to control it.

[phillpower2]

It is possible that this is caused by nothing more than wear and tear ie regular use.
Try disabling the touchpad as I suggested earlier and see if the mouse behaves itself, see page 50 of the user manual for how to do this, it also details how to adjust the sensitivity of the device/s; http://support.dell....en/1H018bk3.pdf