Typing when suddenly no characters appear on screen

Windows Vista Home version: HP SR 2163WM computer. This happens randomly whenever I'm typing. Might be in Word or during this message (just happened when I was typing "during"). Suddenly the cursor is gone, no letters are appearing, etc. This isn't the buffer just overloading, the cursor just disappears and I can't type. It's like it jumps off the page, but it's very irritating (just happened again on "like").
Keith

 

Would be hard to say without actually seeing it happen... Reinstall mouse and keyboard driver? I'm not sure, maybe corrupt registry. i'm just guessing, if you can provide any other details please do

 

It's like when you've accidentally hit a control+a key and your typing is suddenly appearing in the URL box or somewhere unexpected. Only in this case it's not appearing anywhere. Not happening today either. Just random.

 

This thing is driving me nuts. Well, here's more information. In Firefox, as in Microsoft Word, normally the border at the top of the screen is blue. When typing ceases the border has turned gray. A click of the mouse is all it takes to turn the border blue and restore the cursor (in all programs). Sometimes the border turns gray again and typing stops immediately after you hit the first key, but then another click and you're back again. This doesn't just happen on the internet. It happens whenever I'm typing on the computer, whether in Word or Excel or Firefox, etc. Since I'm a touch typist I waste a lot of time stopping and clicking to get things going again.

Help!

 

That means the window you are seeing is inactive. Something is stealing your windows focus. In layman's terms that means some process/program etc. is running. If you do not see any other item in the taskbar at the bottom, it means that there is something hidden that is now active.
When the title bar turns gray, press ctrl+alt+del and see what processes are running.

I'd be curious to see the list and maybe this process/program can be tracked down.

 

OK, it happened again, I did the ctrl-alt-del and looked as processes that were running. Here's the first few:

AOL software.exe
Atievxx.exe
AvastUI.exe
CLI.exe
CLI.exe
CLE.exe
conline.exe

I stopped AOL software.exe and Atievxx.exe and the blue screen reappeared, but I don't know if they were what was messing up my access to typing or not.
Keith

 

See if you can stop AOLsoftware from loading at startup (msconfig) and see if the problems stop.

 

Well, I stopped the AOL software from running and the problem seems to have gone away! Thanks. Greatly appreciated.
Keith