problem Laptop's touch pad becomes erratic, requiring the left button to make a selection

[apairofpcs]

I've had a beautifully trouble-free Toshiba Satellite A505-S6569 laptop since Aug. 2009. I installed an Intel 530 180GB SSD with the Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit OS in May 2014. The weirdest thing happens when I least expect it. When I move the cursor using the touch pad and tap on the touch pad to make a selection when the cursor is over a feature, the cursor jumps to the right of the screen erratically, preventing me from making the selection. I'm able to make a selection by moving the cursor over a feature and clicking the left touch pad button. This always works.

When this happened I exited all open programs, with no change. Also, I logged out of the OS, with no change. The only remedy is to restart, which can be a burden when I'm in the middle of a few tasks. The Synaptics PS/2 Port Touch Pad drivers are the most current ones. I don't remember exactly when this symptom started, but it seems to have been fairly recently. The SSD and OS have performed as expected. I use the Intel SSD Toolbox often. There are no problems with any drivers in Device Manager.

Any ideas?

 

[sedrosken]

Something similar has stricken me - my touchpad doesn't work at all. I haven't disabled it in software, though I probably would have if it was working.

Maybe see if you can find an older version of the driver, uninstall the newer one and install the older one in its place. That's all I can think of to try, other than cracking open the case and reseating the connector for the touchpad, if the connector isn't just soldered on.

 

[Mercutio]

The palmrest and touchpad are a single part on most laptops. You could try opening up the laptop and re-seating the internal cable. That may or may not be within your comfort level. You could also spend $25 or so on a new palmrest and touchpad. Or you could just plug in another pointing device, which is probably the sane solution for a five year old laptop.

 

[apairofpcs]

Something similar has stricken me - my touchpad doesn't work at all. I haven't disabled it in software, though I probably would have if it was working.

Maybe see if you can find an older version of the driver, uninstall the newer one and install the older one in its place. That's all I can think of to try, other than cracking open the case and re-seating the connector for the touch pad, if the connector isn't just soldered on.

Thank you. Sometimes an older driver works better than a newer one, which shouldn't be the case. I have a few older versions available in the Driver Update section in Device Manager. I'll leave a disassembly tactic as a last resort.

 

[apairofpcs]

The palm rest and touch pad are a single part on most laptops. You could try opening up the laptop and re-seating the internal cable. That may or may not be within your comfort level. You could also spend $25 or so on a new palm rest and touch pad. Or you could just plug in another pointing device, which is probably the sane solution for a five year old laptop.

I failed to mention that the event happened only three times in the five years, but started recently. I falsely implied that the issue is a common one. Disassembly is not yet indicated.

My laptop doesn't have a palm rest below the touch pad. The two buttons are at the front end of the top panel. See the attached picture.

 

[apairofpcs]

Here's one for the books. The same keyboard malfunction occurred on my Nov. 2012 vintage Lenovo Thinkpad T530 laptop yesterday. This was the first time. I recently installed the latest driver from the Lenovo website. The only commonality between the Toshiba and Lenovo laptops, is that they're linked to the same wireless network. There is nothing more I can share with you that may lead to the cause of this malfunction. As with the Toshiba, a restart was necessary to correct the problem.

Is there anybody on this forum who has a connection to Ghostbusters?

 

[Howell]

The touch pads may have been made by the same manufacturer and thus the same driver and maybe faults. Hard to know.

 

[sedrosken]

Touchpads come from two main manufacturers that I know of, ALPS and Synaptics. My Synaptics one completely quit on me. I don't care all that much because I use a wireless mouse anyway, but seriously? Never had that happen before. I'm probably out of warranty anyway, even though I've got the original OS on it they will probably refuse to fix it because I removed all their crapware. And got rid of their "recovery" (read: recrap-ify) partition.

I'm seriously looking into getting one of those USB thinkpad keyboards, the price isn't terrible (~$60 on Amazon, remember this is Lenovo we're talking about after all) and I'm not one for loud mechanical switches anyway. I can make do with what is basically a laptop keyboard with a tracknipple on USB. I've been using the school thinkpads and those tracknipples are pretty nice. And I don't have to pick up and slam a tracknipple back down to get it to stop moving all over the place. From the placement of the buttons and stuff, I should be able to play what games I still have time for decently enough. It'll save time too, as most of the time I'm using this now I'm using it for typing. Having to move my hand across the table to use my mouse, while it sounds incredibly lazy, is a pet peeve of mine and one of the reasons I keep the sensitivity on it so high so I can keep it right next to the machine and still be able to use it.

 

[LunarMist]

The newer laptop touchpads are really crap for the most part. The touchpad on my work Dell was basically useless out of the box and became completely useless in less than a year. :tdown:

 

[sedrosken]

They know you're just going to get a wireless mouse anyway, so why would they bother putting quality touchpads in their laptops? Now, the one in the Latitude D610 is just starting to go, but it's about ten years old, so...

 

[Mercutio]

Not every touchpad is awful. Like a lot of things, the crappy stuff is most likely on consumer hardware, with some of the worst examples being the HP/Dell vomit boxes.

 

[Howell]

The tactile doors have started to come of of my Lenovo but it still works fine. I've never had a touchpad fail, all the way back to the ps2 touchpad I attached to my gateway 2000 laptop.