Precision 5540, touchpad freeze

Is there any resolution for this problem? A new driver? Or is it a hardware failure?

I'm having the exact same issue and have been dealing with it for the past year.  Please Dell, could you fix this.

Thanks,

Rick

My temporary fix is to remove the "HID compliant touchpad" driver under "HID interface devices" (names may not be 100% accurate, I'm translating to English) in Device Manager and then force the Manager to "scan for device changes". You can navigate to that option using left alt and cursor keys - touchpad will be off once you delete the driver. The scan reinstalls the driver and re-enables the touchpad. It works until... the screen goes black again But it's better than going in and out of sleep mode.

For a long time it seemed I'm the only one with the problem - looking once again for a solution. Over a year and no Windows or Dell driver update changed anything... It might have something to do with the hardware. Not painful enough to reinstall Windows to check though.

I tried PNPUTIL to reset the driver. Still not possible without a reboot which is what we're trying to avoid.:

C:\>pnputil /disable-device "ACPI\DLL0906\4&8D7ED92&0"
Microsoft PnP Utility
Failed to disable device: ACPI\DLL0906\4&8D7ED92&0
Cannot disable critical system device.

C:\>pnputil /restart-device "ACPI\DLL0906\4&8D7ED92&0"
Microsoft PnP Utility
Restarting device: ACPI\DLL0906\4&8D7ED92&0
System reboot is needed to complete configuration operations!

@ysiuthanks for the suggestion. I was looking for a way to disable and reenable the driver as a workaround, but my Precision 5540 does not have any touchpad or trackpad drivers in Device Manager.

It has 5 instances of "HID-compliant mouse" and one instance of "PS/2 Compatible Mouse"

I tried disabling all six one by one. I found the Logitech Mouse I use while docked as a "HID-compliant mouse" as HID\VID_046D&PID_C084&MI_00\10&2939E6BC&0&0000

The other 4 "HID-compliant mouse"  did not disable the touchpad.

The "PS/2 Compatible Mouse"  does not offer the option to disable the driver. Only uninstall.

Dell replaced my touchpad, including the entire palmrest/keyboard case, and the issue is still unresolved. Removing the driver and reinstalling without reboot does make it work again. Some random occurrence when docking/undocking or sleep/wake cycles moving from power to battery makes it happen, I can't consistently reproduce the issue.

precision-meh,

Following up to see if you checked the touchpad functionality after disconnecting the external peripherals from the system?  Let us know.

I posted a reply above but it doesn't appear to be a linear reply in the thread, scroll up!

PS board ID is reported by a Synaptics firmware update utility from Lenovo's website. It won't update your firmware but it will report the board type.

I searched Dell’s support site for a Synaptics driver. I found a driver listed for the Alienware Area51m R2, and I realize these are not exactly the same touchpads, but I made an assumption that Synaptics has a unified driver for modern multi-touch pads at this point and these are certainly the same ‘era’ of laptop hardware from dell. I also saw that this driver update fixes a “lag while drawing” issue.

https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=c28kj&oscode=wt64a&productcode=alienware-area51m-r2-laptop

I downloaded and ran the driver install package, which didn’t update my device driver version in device manager for my “HID-compliant touch pad”. I manually updated the driver:

PS this is absolutely the touch pad device because if I disable this device the touchpad stops working, and I routinely disable/reenable to fix the trackpad problem.

Select this:

After updating double check your driver version again:

The Precision 5540 has synaptics board ID 3125 - 1. Interested to know if The Area51 R2 reports the same board type. I know they are different dimensions and resolution.

Hope this helps somebody.

I installed all available updates for the Precision 5540 a few months ago.The problem does not occur when the notebook is connected to a dock and external monitor, mouse, and keyboard.

I traveled the past two weeks and did not see this issue while operating standalone, so it may be fixed.

I have the same issue. Touchpad goes into a mode with intermittent freezes after the system is idle but screen blanks.

I spoke too soon. I was traveling this week and used the 5540 undocked. The touchpad problem still occurs.  I have been unable to find any solution, or even a way to reset the driver.

I have the same issue.Touchpad goes into a mode with intermittent freezes after the system is idle. I use the dell support assist to download the last driver and update my laptop. But the problem still persists. I have to reboot my laptop to get te trackpad back in use. This is so annoying.

I'm also having similar sounding issue.  In reading the various replies, it is not clear we all are all experiencing the same issue.  The symptom has been described as an intermittent hang of the touchpad. So, what does that mean to everyone?  Do you mean that the touchpad hangs and won't respond until the system is reboot or the driver shutdown and then restarted, or does it mean that it intermittently stops responding and then magically starts responding?  The latter case is what I'm experiencing. The touchpad doesn't respond immediately. It lags for about 3 seconds and then starts moving.  But if I pause for about 1 second, I get back into the state where it takes about 3 seconds for the touchpad to respond again.  This is very annoying, and I would describe the problem as an erratic touchpad behavior.

The point I'm making is that it's not clear reading all the responses that we all are talking about the same symptom. 

From my description, the behavior I'm describing is most likely caused by the OS not responding to awakening touchpad interrupt events. Once the touchpad event handler is awoken, it responds just fine.  The problem I think is that the driver put it back into the sleep mode way to soon.  So, if my analysis is correct, it's clearly a driver issue (or a driver/os configuration issue).

My device manager shows up as the same configuration as shown by "precision-meh".  Some of us have apparently different configurations (i.e. different drivers, and maybe different hardware.)  Again, that's another reason that makes resolving this issue more problematic.

I realize that I not offering any solution, but if there are dell engineers following this discussion, I'm at least offering them a pathway to further investigate.  Maybe there's a device property setting that would make the driver more responsive when awoken.

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I thought I had posted my reply, but I just now see that it was only in a draft form.  I'll go ahead and post what I had written, but I'll add that my touchpad has been working perfectly fine for a week. (No, doubt because I decided to complain about the issue (:-).  My gut still stays it's a firmware issue and it's related to how interrupts are handled under certain situations.  I did do a lot of touchpad movements prior to the problem going away; five plus minutes of rapidly moving the cursor using the touchpad, short pauses and repeating this action. I wonder if that caused the touchpad interrupts to be serviced at some elevated priority.