cursor or pointer erratic

need some advice
I was given a Toshiba Sattelite laptop 1765
It was originally equipped with windows 98
Somebody installed XP---the cursor or pointer is very erratic---sometimes its locked and will not respond and i need to reboot numerous times to unlock it---sometimes it pulls hard to the end of the screen and is very hard to control

I reinstalled xp from my Dell disk and still not working right, although right after install i only had an aol 8.0 disk which i installed and cursor was fine until i upgraded to 9.0 security and it again got erratic

I am in the process now of reformatting and reinstalling XP and i will try it again with just aol 8.0

Has anyone any comments??

appreciate it

 

PS---I have tried it in safe mode and still the same response after reinstalling XP for the second time----the mouse i am using is the one on the Toshiba key board---is there an update available for an internal mouse??