Windows XP word processing troubles

[Batman]

An aquaintance of mine has some troubles with Windows word processing (specifically, Word 2002/WordPad). Specifically, the cursor eventually (after anything from 20 seconds to 5 minutes following no pattern I could identify) starts moving around the document pretty much at random, making typing the tiniest bit awkward. Virus scan, HijackThis and Spybot came up empty and deinstalling/reinstalling Word plus installing the Office ServicePack did exactly jack shit (system is a 6 year old laptop running XP Home Premium cum SP3).
As the problem is apparently not limited to Word (WordPad does the exact same thing, or so she claims) I suspect simply switching to another word processor might not make much of a difference. Anybody got any ideas?

[rhoenix]

And this "moving mouse cursor" issue doesn't occur at any other time?

You may have a word macro running, or something. Try this: do a google search for a clean version of Word's "normal.dot" (Word's template file for new documents), and then save it over the one you currently have.

If that doesn't do the trick, and you only experience this issue in Wordpad or Word, then I'd say download LibreOffice and try that.

[Batman]

The mouse pointer stays where it's supposed to, the cursor is what moves around.
And why would replacing normal.dot (something that should have already happened when I reinstalled Word) affect WordPad?

[B4UTRUST]

Alright, it's a laptop, yes? Check something. Look under your touchpad settings in windows and see if you have 'turn off tapping while typing' enabled or not? And try lowering your touchpad sensitivity or palm contact sensitivity as another idea. Since I use a wireless mouse I completely disabled my touchpad because I kept having similar issues while typing.

[rhoenix]

The mouse pointer stays where it's supposed to, the cursor is what moves around.
And why would replacing normal.dot (something that should have already happened when I reinstalled Word) affect WordPad?

Dunno. Ask Microsoft.

[Batman]

Definitely not the touchpad, guys, that was one of the first things I looked out for (though disabling it is a good idea in and of itself, the thing is used as an impromptu desktop anyway-I even removed the battery because the bloody thing was dead anyway). Neither her nor me touched the touchpad while typing.

[B4UTRUST]

Out of curiosity did you guys download any sort of windows update recently?

After doing a bit of search this has happened to other people in the past following updates from microsoft. If you guys did update windows try going to a restore point prior to this update.

[Batman]

Given that I had to enable the Update feature to begin with (nevermind inform the user that such a feature existed) I rather think not, but it's worth looking into.