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freezing touchpad
Have just taken deliverey of inspiron 1720. Touchpad freezes intermittently. no apperent pattern. During use freezes about 5 secs, then ok again. Intend to phone support Mon. But am I doing anything thick?!
Patrick77
4 Posts
0
February 24th, 2008 17:00
I have the same problem Touchpad freezes no apperent pattern 2-3 sec. (dell Vostro 1700, a week old) Contacted dell support, they say I need new video drivers, but it didn't help.
robert2513
13 Posts
0
March 4th, 2008 01:00
I've eliminated all the usual suspects (viruses/spyware, corrupt drivers, background processes, dirty touchpad) but the problem persists. I contacted Dell last month and first they suggested to reinstall Vista. I went ahead and performed a fresh install. Thinking that maybe some program was causing the problem, I only installed the latest updates and drivers. Unfortunately, the touchpad acted up. I contacted Dell a second time and they had the palmrest replaced but this did not fix the problem. The system passes the diagnostics.
Has anyone else had this problem or know of a possible fix? What makes this hard is that, as Patrick77 mentioned, there seems to be no apparent reason for why this happens. Checking the task manager when the problem occurs shows nothing out of the ordinary.
Any comments will be appreciated. Thanks,
robert2513
EDIT: Clarified problem.
robert2513
13 Posts
0
March 8th, 2008 17:00
Contacted Dell again on Tuesday about this problem and they sent a tech out yesterday (Friday). When the tech was here, asked him the revision numbers of the old and new motherboards. The old one was 'A01' and the new one is now 'A00' and came with BIOS version A05 installed.
Unfortunately, as I was using the laptop now, the touchpad acted up :smileysad:: lag between touchpad and figure movement, which lasted for about ~30 seconds. I know the motherboards are practically the same but to eliminate any software problems I am going to reinstall Vista. I'll post back with any updates.
robert2513
humin2
30 Posts
0
March 9th, 2008 14:00
You're not alone on this one. I have the same problem. Thanks for pointing out this thread for me.
robert2513
13 Posts
0
March 10th, 2008 23:00
Glad to help. Hopefully this problem will get fixed.
I finished doing a clean install of Vista today with drivers and updates only. I keep using it and see what happens.
robert2513
robert2513
13 Posts
0
March 11th, 2008 16:00
humin2
30 Posts
0
March 12th, 2008 01:00
Keep trying, I have to travel for a couple weeks so I can't do anything about it until I get back.
-dn-
vitog123
1 Message
0
March 15th, 2008 00:00
my touchpad is really bad.
compared with a similar spec'd e1705 its pathetic. it doesnt have much accuracy or sensitivity despite the adjustments in the software (they do nothing)
how can dell make such a nice set up and attach a faulty touchpad?
robert2513
13 Posts
0
March 15th, 2008 02:00
Gpmanley
2 Posts
0
May 14th, 2008 00:00
Just touching base to see if there has been any updates on this thread. I experience the same issues. The freeze is particularly irritating while working in excel
Thanks for this tread. I can not believe that Dell has not put out an update to fix this issue
robert2513
13 Posts
0
May 14th, 2008 01:00
Hello there,
I kinda forgot about this thread :smileysad: but the good news is I *think* I did find a solution to the problem.
Did your laptop ship with a 5400 RPM (rotations per minute) hard drive or a 7200 RPM? Reason I ask is that I had another laptop with the same hard drive (brand, model, size) except the RPM was different. The second laptop had a 7200 RPM hard drive in it. For some reason, I decided to switch the drives and put the 7200 RPM one in the Inspiron 1720. I then used Acronis TrueImage 10 to clone the old drive to the new one: no reinstall of Windows. Afterwards, no problems with the touchpad.
I then took it one step further, and installed the 5400 RPM hard drive in the other laptop, thinking maybe there was a problem with the that particular hard drive. Strange thing was, the touchpad was fine.
I tested the 7200 RPM hard drive for a few days and the touchpad never had a problem.
My guess as to why this worked is that the problem must have had something to do with the hard drive buffer and the particular motherboard used in the Inspiron 1720. It may have been that data was being buffered faster than the drive could read/write. Or maybe it had something to do with the firmware of the 5400 RPM drive. Only guesses though.
I wish there was another solution such as a simple driver update, but thus far, this is only solution I have found that works. And I see Dell still has not upgraded the drivers since I looked last.
Thanks,
robert2513
humin2
30 Posts
0
May 14th, 2008 11:00
That is an interesting theory. I've found that it got a little better by upgrading to Vista SP1.
robert2513
13 Posts
0
May 14th, 2008 21:00
Thanks for sharing, I haven't installed SP1 yet. That does make more sense since the 5400 RPM drive worked in the other laptop. A software fix would be a cheaper and easier than buying another hard drive. Maybe someday Dell will release an updated driver.
robert2513
kamyers1
8 Posts
0
July 31st, 2008 23:00
I am having similar problems with the Touchpad on my 1720, but it is pretty bad! In my case am running Windows XP, so this problem does NOT appear to isolated to Vista. Cursor often lags finger movements, sometimes badly. Sometimes cursor only wants to move vertically when I am moving finger horizontally or vice-versa. Also (and this is *really* weird) sometimes there is an odd and fairly loud "thumping" sound that seems to be eminating from the vicinity of the touchpad, and seems to be worst when the touchpad is misbehaving severely. This could actually be coming from the speakers, but I haven't been able to tell for certain as of yet.
All of this is occuring with a clean install of Windows XP plus all recommended updates from Microsoft, and latest hardware drivers for XP from the Dell web site. In regard to the potential hard drive and nVidia video relationships mentioned elsewhere in this thread, I am running two 320 GB 7200 rpm drives, so it isn't just a 5400 rpm drive issue, and my machine has the Intel chipset video, so it isn't just an nVidia driver issue.
Any other ideas??? These problems are *extremely* annoying, so much so that as of this moment I am very disappointed in my purchase of this machine, and am seriously considering trading it in for something else!!!
humin2
30 Posts
0
August 1st, 2008 00:00
Hmm, no ideas, but I still have the issue.
I've given up on Dell and Vista (you listening Dell????), I just bought a Macbook Pro - I've gone to the dark side.........I'm all done with Dell.