Inspiron 13 7348 2-in-1, ghost touch screen, solution

Like so many others, I found myself with a Dell Inspiron 7000 series laptop with ghost touch issues that made it unusable unless I deactivated the driver for the touch screen. Basically, you get a constant barrage of touches all over the screen, sometimes localized to one area, other times random. Sometimes "flexing" the screen in certain ways or pressing in certain areas on the edge of the screen can make it somewhat usable, but that's not a permanent solution. Updating to the latest drivers didn't fix it either. After reading through pages of forum posts and spending time with Dell on the phone with no solution other than replacing the screen, I found something that worked.

Here are the steps:

1. Make sure the screen is completely clean and free from buildup.

2. Go to Dell's Drivers and Downloads website and use your service tag to find all the drivers for your model. There were 35 drivers for my model, an Inspiron 7348 2-in-1.

3. Locate the driver titled, "LCD touch re-calibration (Dell Internal Only)" and download it. This will download a file called "LCD touch re-calibration.zip" to your computer.

*Note: The fact that this file is labeled "internal only" and is password protected suggests that it could make breaking changes to your computer, so proceed at your own risk.

4. Locate the .zip file on your computer and unzip it. The password is: breakfix (Credit to Drew Graybeal for the password)

5. Run the file ReK.exe. Read the warning screen about making sure nothing is touching the screen and staying away from radio interference and stuff. Hit "Continue" and wait a couple seconds for the magic to happen.

On my device this instantly fixed the ghost touch issue, but left a narrow strip of dead zone from the top to the bottom of the screen that wouldn't respond to any touch. That suggests to me that my ghost touch issue was caused by actual physical damage. And yes, the narrow strip was in the same location where most of the ghost touches occurred. I was happy with this result, as the dead zone is something I can work around, while the ghost touches made the computer practically unusable.

Let me know if this does or doesn't work for you and any oddities you notice.

LCD Touch Calibration Utility
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