Jumpy cursor makes scrolling impossible on XPS 13 trackpad

Question

I just got the XPS 13 yesterday and I love almost everything about it. That is, except for the trackpad (touchpad). When I hold my finger on the trackpad, trying to keep the cursor still, the cursor wobbles and jumps around a lot. (It's not that my finger is shaky, because I don't have this problem on other trackpads.) This makes both two-finger scrolling gestures and one-finger side scrolling utterly useless, because they cause the page to shake and jump around constantly. I lose nearly all control. I've tried all kinds of combinations of settings in the Cypress TrackPad Settings. Decreasing the trackpad speed makes it slightly better, but it's still a problem, and I don't want my cursor that slow. The computer started out with the Cypress driver version 2.3.6.25, A00. I've also tried version 2.3.6.26, A06 and 2.3.6.12, A04, which I found on the XPS 15z drivers page; the former is slightly better but still very problematic. Completely uninstalling the Cypress driver so that the trackpad is using only default Windows drivers totally solves the problem of the shaky cursor. It is smooth and precise. But then there is no support for scrolling or any of the multi-finger gestures. Dell technical support had me update my BIOS to version A02, which did not change anything, and eventually decided to send me a replacement computer. This is nice but I don't believe it will fix the problem. The fact that the shaky cursor problem goes away when I uninstall the Cypress driver shows that the problem lies with the driver, not the hardware. Online reviewers also seem to have problems: The problem is that the Cypress drivers are all over the place. I tried three different versions of the software and manually tweaked every setting I could, and couldn't find a single combination that both allowed for smooth two-finger scrolling and decent palm rejection. The pad is sensitive enough and close enough to the keyboard that it's almost impossible not to hit it as you type, and the software's not always smart enough to keep you from jumping a line when you do. There's no way to easily and quickly turn off the touchpad while you're typing, and scrolling can be exceptionally jerky, too. Also, no matter which version of the software I used, the Cypress pad was sluggish to respond to gestures like scrolling, pinch-to-zoom, and tap-to-click, which meant that the laptop only did what I told it to do after a noticible delay. Eventually, I gave up and switched to a mouse. I suspect you'd do the same. (http://www.theverge.com/2012/3/6/2848346/dell-xps-13-review) After using the keyboard for a few days we found ourselves neither loving nor hating it, but we did lean toward the latter when it came to the clickable trackpad. It too has a soft-touch feel to it, which makes it a bit sticky as you try to gesture. We could live with that if it were responsive enough. We cranked the sensitivity as high as we could in the Cypress TrackPad settings, which helped to some degree, but it still felt unpredictable and unreliable. We particularly had issues when clicking, as the slight movement of our fingertip when depressing the trackpad would cause the cursor to jump. Instead of simply placing the text caret we'd wind up highlighting a full row of text. This happened over and over again regardless of how precise we tried to be. (http://www.engadget.com/2012/03/06/dell-xps-13-review/) Is anyone here from Dell knowledgeable about this? I would really like to keep my XPS 13 but this issue makes it pretty unusable for me.

vwwnab · Answer

I couldn't have described the situation any better - love the unit but if this inability to scroll fluidly doesn't get fixed quick I'm sending it back.  There is no fixing it with the current driver / program (Cypress Track Pad), I've been adjusting it in e very way for the last two hours.  Extremely frustrating !

stockman801 · Answer

I spent an hour on the phone with tech support today, and they finally directed me to uninstall the cypress touchpad, and then reinstall a different driver, which is now working MUCH better. Multitouch works, two finger zoom and scrolling now works too. I'm happy!

http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/19/DriverDetails/DriverFileFormats?DriverId=5VMYF&FileId=2731104131

vwwnab · Answer

THAT DID IT !! I was about to send this back but that made all thr difference in the world - they should email all those shipped & fix those moving forward on this issue.

nick222 · Answer

Really? That link is for the 2.3.6.12, A04 driver, which I already tried with no success :-(

vwwnab · Answer

nick222, Be sure you uninstall the driver on the unit first, then click on stockman801's link.  Did that do it?

nick222 · Answer

Yes I did, thanks though.

Ryan_717 · Answer

Thanks, Stockman801. This solution helped significantly with the scrolling issue; it does, however, appear that I've now lost the multi-finger gestures (though they're not as important).

MatthewAngel · Answer

I have the answer for you. I've tweaked a non dell driver with a fix for the reason the trackpad acts like a fool. email me at  or tweet me @

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