Traveld, this is usually caused by a defective digitizer or digitizer control board. Of course you always want to try a restore and factory reset first (you may lose all your data) and see if that fixes it. Most likely you will have to replace the control board or digitizer. Start with the cheaper part first:-) [http://www.ifixit.com/Device/HP_TouchPad#guideList|Here are] all the guides you use for the repair. The parts are readily available. Hope this helps, good luck