How To Stop Windows From Trying To "help" Me?

Often when I move the mouse, Windows tries to "help" me by scrolling the page up or down a significant distance. What's really remarkable is how often it goes the wrong direction. You'd think that even if it chose which direction to go completely at random, it would still be right half the time. But incredibly, it almost always guesses the wrong direction, and a lot of times the place where I wanted to be on the page is completely out of sight. Can anybody tell me how to stop this annoying behavior?

 

The mouse wheel is also a button. In many browsers it turns on an auto-scroll feature if you intentionally or accidently press the scroll wheel down. You should see a round circle that replaces your pointer. If that happens, press the scroll wheel down again just like you are right or left clicking.

Maybe this is what is happening...

 

Thanks for answering AtlBo, but this mouse is one of those laser jobs. All it's got on the bottom is the laser and a recessed on / off switch.

 

skulldugerys_dup...

I'm referring to the mouse wheel/scroll wheel on top...

http://pctechnotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/mouse-scroll-wheel.jpg

It can be use like right or left click. Browsers often assign auto-scroll to the scroll wheel. This is known as a middle click. Press down on the wheel without moving the wheel forward or backward...

 

Since I didn't know about the middle clicker, I never clicked it intentionally, and I'm sure I never clicked it accidentally either, because it doesn't have a "hair trigger", and when you click it, it makes a clicking noise and that round icon shows, neither of which I ever noticed. Anyway, clicking it seems to work on this webpage, but it doesn't work at all in Notepad or Word, which are a couple programs I've had this problem in. On the other hand, now that I've middle-clicked, the problem seems to have stopped in those programs, at least for the moment. Maybe my mouse's middle clicker is sticking?

 

No idea what might be happening in Notepad. The feature doesn't exist. It does exist in Word, though.

When you open your program, browser, pdf viewer, mail, or office document, auto-scroll is automatically off. You must have been pressing the middle click button too hard if pressing it then solved the problem...

 

I don't know, but if the problem never comes back, then all's well that ends well. If it DOES come back, I'll play with the middle clicker and see if that affects the situation. Thanks.

 

You're welcome. Let us know if we can help further with this...

 

Well, this problem DID return, and it now seems probable that it's caused by the same thing that's been causing another problem I've been having, which I describe in my thread Any Way To Lock Desktop Shortcuts In Position?, namely that I apparently need to reinstall Windows 7, so I'm moving the whole discussion over to a newer one of my threads, "Why Did F3 Suddenly Stop Working In Notepad?".