AHHH someone please help!!

OK this is driving me insane. I picked up a Dell insperion 8000
laptop from a friend several months ago and installed XP on it.
I updated all drivers and bios and everything seemed to be working fine. The problem that is driving me crazy is that my touch pad is now freaking out!!!!!!!!!
The cursor goes crazy!!!!!!!!
I can't seem to control it!
I've tried reinstalling the latest Synaptics drivers but with no avail. I've tried to disable the touch pad but the system insists on reinstalling after restart.
I even went as far as disconnecting the device from inside the machine!
Has anyone experienced this with their Dell laptop?
I looked through the Dell Tech support forum. Looks like many dell laptop owners have had the problem but none of them received any fix, in fact many were given the run-around.
Currently, it is the only working computer I have at home and I can not do work on it.
Any suggestions?

This happened to mine as well. It was just dirty, lots of cat hair (he likes to sleep on keyboards ). I found that opening it up and cleaning out the keyboard/touchpad area fixed it. Of course, that's just my case, so YMMV.

Thanks but i am afraid it is some software problem.
The cursor still goes haywire after physically disconnecting the device and disabling the device in windows.
Even after plugging in a USB mouse to once again move my cursor, somthing else is making it scroll.
For instance, if i move the cursor to a menu bar and hover it over say the word "file", ALL my drop down lists start flashing very rapidly.

You tried disabling the touchpoint stick and leaving the touchpad enabled? The trackpoint stick is overly sensitive and you sometimes get odd behaviour from it.

Here's a Dell forums thread on a problem that sounds like what you're experiencing.

The solution seems to be "diabling of the keyboard tracker."

- trs

Ah - tman beat me to it!

Sad to say that I've tried that, worked fine for about 5 minutes and it came back.
I did not however physically disable it from the board.
After trying almost everything and reading different suggestions, I am starting to think maybe it is not a touchpad issue but a keyboard issue.

I am starting to think maybe it is not a touchpad issue but a keyboard issue.

Does your model have the trackstick along with the touchpad as someone sugested? The tracksticks are notorious for going bad and needing to be replaced, so it would be far more likely. The reason most laptops come with touchpads is not because everyone likes them so much, but because they have no moving parts and are far more reliable.

Matthew