Touchpad Unresponsive but working After BIOS Upgrade

Question

Have a strange one here. I have a Studio XPS 1647 I5. I recently upgraded the BIOS to A11 as i was on A10 and i didn't realise that A11 was out.

All has been fine until recently the mouse pointer was starting to jump around the screen in jerky movements when using the touchpad then becomes totally unresponsive. I've cleaned the touchpad but it was still the same. Tried to re-install the Synaptics touchpad drivers but still the same. It seems ok for around 5 mins but then starts to get jerky and unresponsive. Tried to remove the synaptics drivers aswell but the same issue. This has been working fine for about 18 months. Ive also done a totally fresh vanilla install of win 7 to be sure its not a driver conflict but the same issue. With an external USB mouse pointer moves around no problem at all.

Thought i had nothing to lose so went back to A10 BIOS as it was stable before, and this has made the touchpad totally unresponsive. Broken touchpad then i thought, but i saw on the dell website that there was a A00 BIOS available to download. So with nothing to lose i tried that and now the touchpad works beautifully, fluent and responsive as its always been......but.....the keyboard does not work now....no response at all so i could not log in as i have a password. Rebooted the laptop and it seemed to take a while booting with a blank screen but got there in the end and now the keyboard works and im back to a very jerky, unresponsive touchpad again.

A few observations....before i did the BIOS upgrade i started to see a different screen at boot up. It was the PheonixBIOS setup utility screen, but it just had a summary of things and then said press any key to continue, this never used to happen but all of a sudden did. Sometimes that same screen comes up but the press any key to continue message is not there and i cannot boot, so have to power off and power on again, but this is only the odd occasion. Also, again on the odd occasion ive had the message. Another screen that seems to choose when to appear at boot is a "Pheonix Secure Core Benton 2" screen, never seen this before...it displays a few items including "Intel Capella CRB reference BIOS".....what the hell? Then has 3 beebs and gives me 3 options, SETUP, CONTINUE or BOOT MENU.

I fear the laptop is on its way out but i would like confirmation that there is nothing more i can do. Reflashed the A11 BIOS now and im back to where i started.

Any help/advise is appreciated

DELL-Deepa R · Answer

Hi,

Thank you for explaining the troubleshooting that you performed already. We can try to perform some more troubleshooting steps which should resolve the issue. Please follow below mentioned steps:-

1. Change the Sensitivity Settings for the Pointing Device from Control panel - Mouse - Device Settings - Dell Touchpad tab.

2. New computers have added gesture features to the touchpad hardware and drivers. A few of these features are two or three finger scrolling, pinch zoom, circle zoom, rotate and swiping. These new features may be the reason for the erratic cursor movement since most are turned on by default. You can disable or modify the way these features work in the touchpad driver properties.

3. Run custom diagnostics on Dell 32 Bit Diagnostics. Tap F12 as soon as you switch on your system. You will get Boot Options. Select Diagnostics and then custom diagnostic.

4. Hope you have updated the latest version of BIOS and Touchpad drivers. If not please refer to this link and follow the below mentioned steps:-

www.dell.com/.../NeedProductSelection

a. Put in the system’s Service Tag and choose the Operating System.

b. Select the BIOS and download the latest Version of BIOS.

c. Select the latest version of Touchpad driver and update it and restart your system.

Please respond with results

marshyrob · Answer

Thanks for all the info Deepa.  I have already tried all those options and still i get no joy.  Im on A11 BIOS (latest) and ive downloaded the Input drivers for the Synaptics touch pad from the dell website for my service tag number, but still the touchpad is the same.  Ive tried to run the diagnostics but i dont get an option for Advanced, it just runs the tests straight away with no option to go to advanced.  Once its done the memory tests it asks if i want to continue testing which will take another 30 mins i choose continue and it continues doing MATS Test?  where do i choose advanced? for the diagnostics?

DELL-Deepa R · Answer

Hi,

You don’t need to run the extended memory test. I would suggest you to run Dell PC checkup. It detects possible problems with a computer's configuration and performance and offer suggestions to help keep the system in optimal working order. Follow the below mentioned steps to run the test:-

1. Click Start, All Programs, Dell, Dell Support Center and Launch PC Checkup.

2. Click the PC Checkup button and then run custom test on touchpad.

In case your system does not have the Dell Support Center pre-installed, refer to this link for downloading the latest version:-

Select your region and on next page click on green tab that says “Download

marshyrob · Answer

Hi,

Ive ran the dell diagnostics online and it came back with no faults found, this looks like the same test but ive installed and ran it and it did the same, no faults found. Ive set the sensitivity on the mouse properties touchpad to all the different settings, no joy. Its not that anyway but im doing all i can.

The only way i can describe the issue is like when the CPU's are under heavy load, like the machine is doing a heavy task and has no resource to give to other things so they run very jerky and slow for a few seconds and then catch up. But the mouse pointer is doing it all the time, moves jerky and slow, sometimes no response at all then it shoots off and then freezes for minutes at a time. I really dont know whats wrong. I would say the mouse pad is faulty but the fact that on a different version of BIOS (A00) it worked without an issue as it used to work before. Problem was the keyboard did not work on that BIOS for some reason and after a reboot it went back to keyboard working and mouse not! ARGH!!

Any other ideas anyone, or am i doomed and need a new laptop?

marshyrob · Answer

**UPDATE** I used  the Dell support centre app to perform test on the Dell touchpad and when that test is open the touchpad behaves much better (not perfect but better).  When i close the test i get about 5 seconds of decent response then it drops back into the hardly moving jerky state...what is going on here?

DELL-Deepa R · Answer

Hi,

Sorry for the late reply. Would recommend you to please check the issue again by uninstalling the Synaptic touchpad drivers from the Device Manager and restart the system. It would automatically pick the generic drivers. Please keep me posted how the touchpad is working .

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Touchpad Unresponsive but working After BIOS Upgrade

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