I bought jagged alliance 2 in the recent sale but when i play the mouse cursor leaves a trail of arrows everywhere and on the laptop screen the pages wont change. i tried changing the compatibility mode to win 98 but no luck. any ideas?

This is caused by Crossfire (as far as I recall)
In case removing Crossfire does not help, try adding the "SingleGpuExe" or however it's called to JA2.
I think this question was asked a couple of months ago in this forum, do take a look.

Whats crossfire? And how do i add SingleGpuExe? i looked at the other post but that wasnt any help either :( ive heard alot of good things about this series i want to try it out

Crossfire is ATI's way of using 2 graphic cards as one, equivalent to NVIDIA's SLI.
As for the SingleGPUExe (or however that option it's called), it should exist somewhere in the graphic card's options (Catalyst Control Center or NVIDIA's equivalent)
It has been quite some time since I've last played 1.12, so I'm not sure if the ability to play in a window exists for that version, but if it does then usually windowed mode solves this as well, though with the obvious problems windowed mode has.
Hope this helps you play this excellent game.

Thanks mate :) Turning off crossfire seemed to fix it. Man im rusty with computers these days lol.