I am trying to find out what this device is called and how do I stop it from appearing.  It is a TINY, grey-colored version of the scroll bar in Windows XP and it apears (seemingly randomly) while I am moving the pointer in the regular scroll bar and will cause the web page (or Word document) to move very quickly up or down.  I have also seen it appear anywhere on a webpage where I have the cursor and in these INSTANCES, it will be horizontal or vertical (unlike the one on the scroll bar which only works vertically).  I have gone to the control panel and LOOKED under "mouse" but cannot find it.  Also, it may be important to note that I'm using a laptop with a touch pad so I don't know if this object appears on a desk top.  I have never seen it before on my desk top computer at work and am trying to find a way to disengage it but have been unsuccessful, probably because I don't know what it's called.  CAN ANYONE HELP ME?!   Do you know whether the touchpad on that laptop, in fact, has a scroll feature?  I have limited experience with laptops but I have recently had some use of a Gateway laptop which has a specific scroll feature on the right side of the touch pad.  On a few occasions, I discovered that I had accidentally touched that part of the touchpad and activated the scroll feature.  At first, I was not sure what was going on, but eventually realized what had caused the surprise behavior.  Soybean:
I'm not sure.  I just tried that an it may in fact be the case.  How would I find info to turn it off? If you look carefully at the touchpad, does it appear to have more than just than touch area and the left and right mouse button functions?  I believe you should see something along the right side or bottom edge of the touchpad for vertical or horizontal scrolling, if it has that feature.  And, if your touchpad does have scrolling features, I think you need to take a closer look at your Mouse Properties in Control Panel.  This may help: Laptop Scroll Touchpad

By the way, exactly what model is that laptop?Soybean, you have all the answers!  I went to the webpage you provided and the only thing different on my laptop (a Toshiba Satellite L25 SERIES) is that I don't have a "gestures" tap in the Mouse settings (the webpage user appeared to have a Dell).  But your answer seems to totally work.  I notice that the scroll only appear when I'm at the extreme right edge or the bottom edge.  Since I can't figure out how to disable it, I'll just avoid those areas.  I've tried for the last 3 days to figure out what this was.  Thanks, Soy!If it's Synpatics-based: Control Panel-->Mouse-->Device settings.  Click "settings".  Options are under "virtual scrolling".Thanks  million, Rob, that was the answer!!  I would have never figured this out!