Dell XPS 12 Touch screen stop working when flipping screen

My Dell XPS 12 is fully updated, and its already been replaced because the first one had the same problem. The first one had to be replaced because I thought changing the display might fix it. Unfortunately I had a fiasco with technician changing the display rendering the touchscreen entirely non-functional, and I wanted to figure it myself so I tried for a month or so.

The second one has the exact same issue. I'm not going to go through that again. I'm telling ya, it might be prevalent in more systems than you guys believe. I find it hard to believe how it went through when a few hours of use of the computer repeats the problem.

I've tried couple of resolutions you said in your post just few mins ago, because touchscreen stopped working then. Flipping from Clamshell to Tablet mode didn't do anything. Every few days I look for both Windows and Dell updates. None of them helped. Also, I never touched calibration settings on the second system because the experience from the first system(trying to get the issue fixed) tells me it makes general accuracy worse.

So I'm not going to keep replacing the system, hoping I might get a lucky one that doesn't have the issue at all(if that even exists).

Also, turning off most, if not all power settings is extremely undesirable, especially when battery life only lasts 5 hours in local video playback or simple web browsing. Flash and Youtube playback will significanty impact the battery life.

If its true that some systems DO really not have the problem, I suggest next time Dell should work more on quality control so lot less systems are affected in next systems.

Unfortunately for me, I think this is my last(and first!) Dell system. Hope you guys figure it out though, because I think its pretty critical.

Tried all these fixes still happens seemingly at random. With increased risk when i flip the device to tablet mode (the time you need touch to be working the most).

Also just realised my hard drive i got given is 220gb instead of 250gb??? Whats the deal with that?

Getting severely pissed off.

Like most others, my touch-screen became flaky and then stopped altogether.

Dell support did not help much at all.  They asked the standard questions like bios updates, drivers, etc.  I tried to direct them to this forum to try and save me the hours of wasted time, but they would not listen.

At the end they requested that I do a restore to factory which as many of you know is a huge deal if you have done an OS upgrade, loaded many applications, etc. 

I said no and requested a technician come replace the touch-screen.  I had to escalate to a supervisor to make this happen.  Why do you have become ugly to get things to happen?  Extremely unpleasant support experience.

The technician came today, and could not successfully replace the screen.  It was like watching a train wreck.  He stripped the screws, scratched the metal bezel, and then gave up.  Seriously.  He then requested I send the unit back to the factory for repairs. What was funny is that the touch functions did work for about 10 minutes after he torked the monitor, but then stopped again for good.

So... knowing my only option at this point is to send to the factory to repair the damage as well as replace the screen, I decided to go ahead and do a factory reset as I would not trust Dell with my data.  After the reset, as expected, the touch functionality was still broken.

Dell.  Not impressed.

The saga continues...  

When I sent my laptop to dell they gave me a 5-10 day expectation for turn-around.  Here we are past that mark.  The parts were backordered so instead of prepping a replacement unit to send me to meet the SLA, they delay delay delay.  It is 7/12 and I have been without a working laptop since 6/22.  That is 20 days as of this post.

Next week I am heading to Mexico... and no laptop expected which is bad for an IT guy doing remote support.

Even though I have been in contact with a lot of you via private messaging I have not posted on this thread in a while.  There are signs this may be a broad industry issue, but we realize it is personal to you, and Dell is working diligently to ensure our customers have a responsive display with consistent reliable touch functionality.

We have possible solutions that we want to recommend. There are a number of different possible causes, so the ultimate solution for you may be different to other customers on the forum.

If you find that the touch screen won’t work at all, you may need an eDP (embedded Display Port) cable replacement.  It is important you contact technical support in your area or contact me directly through private message.

If you have some touch screen functionality, I have a couple of suggestions that should improve performance if not correct the issue all together.  

• Windows Updates - I have mentioned this earlier in the thread, there are some Windows hotfixes and updates to help with touch screen issues. Please make sure that the system will not go to sleep, have the AC adapter attached to the system and run Windows updates.

• Power Management - Adjusting the power management settings seem to have the biggest impact on touch screen performance.   This is what you do to adjust these settings:

o Go into device manager (just swipe charms and search for device manager or press the Windows key and X key together and choose device manager from the menu). Once in device manager, look for HID and USB devices. Check each one that has a power management tab and make sure that "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" is unchecked. This is so that the touch screen isn’t turned off to save a little battery power.

o Check power management settings (swipe charms and search for control panel and then power options, or Win and X key and power options). Select balanced or high performance.

o You can even go into your power plan advanced settings and change the USB and display settings making sure that neither is being turned off ever.

• Win 8 Touch Calibration - Go into calibrate (control panel, hardware and sound, tablet PC settings, calibrate) and tap or click calibrate, don’t worry about trying to calibrate, just tap or click reset and see if that helps.

If you know that Windows is fully updated, and adjusting the power management and calibrate settings doesn't work please message me if you haven’t already.  Just click on the link in my signature and then click start conversation and please include the service tag of your notebook.

I will be happy to help.

Hmmm. My XPS-12 has not been having problems, but I thought I'd go ahead and make the recommended power option changes, in case they might help avoid future problems.  After changing all the USB and HID settings, I found that touch had completely stopped working, regardless of screen orientation.  I reversed all the power setting changes, rebooted, and touch worked again.

FWIW.

Reading the numerous responses and complains in this thread, I realize that my experience with the touch screen is better than most because after the first couple weeks of ownership, I rarely encounter touch-screen problem. It still happens every once in a long while, but it's rare and I can get my work done. A couple of things I do, and parallels Terry B's recommendations are (1) stay up-to-date with Windows Updates, and (2) tweak power management options ... I never liked the default power management options that come with new systems, so I always create my own power management schemes; I suppose I'm lucky in that whatever power management scheme I devised may have helped with the touch screen issue. I went back and followed TerryB's suggestions on tweaking power management options for all USB and HID devices (as well as tweaking power plan advanced settings), and everything still works. So, good luck, folks.

FYI - I changed my power settings to never sleep, run at full power etc. about 6 - 8 weeks ago and also disabled the screen auto-rotate function (I had a major faff with a game when the screen auto-rotated to portrait and when it went back to landscape I only had a very small window in the middle and had to roll back using Windows system restore from a few days earlier) and I the touch screen has worked fine ever since.  I use the power button to sleep / wake up without any problems.

I had this issue for months. The workaround in my case was to go in to power options and disable USB selective suspend. Result: zero touchscreen freezes. Turning it back on again will cause the touchscreen to start freezing again usually within 15 minutes.

Also be aware that if you have Dell QuickSet installed then the Dell Extended Battery Life feature may automatically change your power profile when you unplug the power adapter, meaning that your laptop may be switching to another power profile that still has USB selective suspend enabled. So either disable it in your other power profiles or in your power options turn off Dell Extended Battery Life as well.

It might also be possible to look in device manager, identify the device that corresponds to the touchscreen input, and uncheck "allow the computer to turn off the device to save power"

Update: After escalation as far up the chain as I could, I finally got a replacement unit over-nighted to me.  I had to engage the corporate dell account manager for the company I work with even though this is a personal laptop, but I received the laptop the day before my trip.

It took that day to restore my backup which got my system exactly back to where it was (Power settings et al) when my touch screen was not working on my original equipment.  Everything now works fine w/o issue.  So Power setttings, tweaking, configing, etc had no relation at all to my failing equipment.  If you reset to factory settings and your touch still does not work..  its hardware.

• Win 8 Touch Calibration - Go into calibrate (control panel, hardware and sound, tablet PC settings, calibrate) and tap or click calibrate, don’t worry about trying to calibrate, just tap or click reset and see if that helps.

After trying many things, I performed this step and unbelievably, it worked. My symptoms were inaccurate touch registrations. On the left or right edges, touch registration was way off. I ran the calibration tool many times and would always have the same results. I could touch the top right corner and it would register the touch in the lower right corner. So trying to close a window, opened the clock (this was at the Desktop). After performing a Reset ONLY in the calibration utility, touch registration started working as you would expect. There is something VERY wrong with the calibration utility. I do hope this gets corrected soon.

Mr. .Terry B. you seem to be more confused than anyone as to what to do about this problem. And how is sending you private messages going to help anyone in this circumstance, ie that you plainly are in the dark as much as we are?

I also have this problem.  A reboot solves it temporarily.

Dustin Bizon

just got my new xps 12 on Oct 30,2013 and touch screen stopped working.  Please help