Ghost Mouse?? My Windows 8 Adventure

I recently replaced my old workhouse laptop with a shiny new Samsung ATIV Book8 Windows 8 laptop.  It’s really sleek and powerful with the new Windows 8 interface and a cool touchscreen. Of course, friends had both warned me and encouraged me about its challenges and new interface. But I’m not one to back away from new things, especially technology.  That said, my bottom line is not wasting time, but getting this machine to help SAVE time so I can be more productive.

Everything looked good until I hooked the laptop via HDMI to my Samsung Central Station external monitor/docking station.  That’s when my mouse became:

<cue dramatic soundtrack>

Paranormal Ghost Mouse!

My external USB mouse was going all over the place on its own, teleporting to random spots on my external monitor like Hiro Nakamura from NBC’s “HEROES”, clicking on whatever it felt like.  In fact, even when I disconnected the mouse, the pointer would wink out, appear somewhere else in its 1900×1080 pixel screen.

Insane!

I was about to give up, and then I realized something.

I needed to shut the touchscreen function of my Windows 8 Laptop when connected to an external monitor.

So I did this from the Samsung Settings App, and voila! Everything worked like it ought to.

Except for Windows 8.  Look, I really don’t mind the cool new tablet swiping feature and the cool apps. But at the end of the day, I need to get to work and find my files really quickly.

That’s why I went and installed START8 which makes my laptop function like good old Windows 7 and allows me to play with the Metro App Screen when I want to.

Over all, I’m very pleased.  It’s just going to take some time to install all my applications and transfer all my files from my old workhorse.

Finding the solution to this problem took several hours of troubleshooting, as there was no information about this issue on the internet.  So if I can save anyone a few hours of frustration with this post, I’ll be pleased.

What are some of your thoughts on Windows 8 (I know I’ll be hearing from the Mac peanut gallery hecklers, just bring it on! 🙂  Please comment below.

 

Joshua Graham is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, winner of the International Book Award and Forward National Literature Award. His thrillers include DARKROOM, LATENT IMAGE and BEYOND JUSTICE, and TERMINUS. Graham's works have been characterized as thought-provoking page-turners.

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