e6520 Touchpad/mouse troubles - Help!

Ok, so I am writing/researching a term paper on my Latitude when suddenly, my touchpad goes out. It'll sort of respond, sometimes, when I touch it, but nothing good. I plugged in my mouse, reinstalled the latest Dell drivers and rebooted a few times in the process, but it's not fixed. Worse, though the USB mouse works, if I click or do something with the touchpad to change the cursor/arrow, it stays that way for a bit. So I can use the USB mouse as normal then, but I don't have the arrow but, say, a cursor.

What just happened? How do I fix it? Please tell me it's not hardware failure... I just bought this thing at the beginning of August....

Oh, I'm running 64-bit Windows 7 Professional. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

I tried one more thing, and now it seems to be working normally: I completely booted down, unplugged everything, took out the battery, and let it sit there, turned off, for about 10-15 min, put the battery back in, then rebooted.

I am still confused, as I have never had such a thing happen before. What do you think happened? Did it overheat? And should I be concerned about this one occurence?

 

Not sure if it's static or EM that does it, but my E6420 Alps touchpad sometimes will get "stuck" wanting to go one way (if you track to the right, it'll spring right back to the left after you let go) until I press Fn-F5 to disable it, then Fn-F5 to reenable it. During that time, the touchpoint still works fine.

It doesn't happen very often but it's probably happened maybe 2-3 times over the three months I've had this laptop (though the last time it happened was probably early last month, so it's been a while). Since then, I've also decreased the sensitivity on it a bit so that it takes a heavier touch to move it around, not sure if that was part of the cause.

 

Interesting. I hadn't thought of static... I did try Fn+F5 a couple of times, but to no avail. The symptoms you describe match how it starts, though.

I really don't want to decrease the sensitivity... even on the lightest settings, the touchpad isn't as smooth and responsive as the Synaptics one on my previous machine.

 

Do you get the OSD prompt with the red circle and white X for that specific device? I'm not sure if you have to wait for it before switching back.

Also, do you have the touchpoint + touchpad or just the touchpad?

 

No, I don't get the prompt...

The touchpoint works just fine, it's just the touchpad that freaked out. It hasn't happened since my panic post, but then I haven't even had time to sit and read my e-mail, let alone spend time stressing it out to see if it'll happen again.

 

Hrm... do you have the Dell Alps Touchpad drivers installed? I have v7.1208.101.116, though they have newer now.

When I toggle, I get little icons in the middle of the screen and a bubble from the touchpad tray icon that indicates the touchpad has been disabled. There are icons for touchpad disabled, touchpoint disabled, touchpoint and touchpad disabled, and both enabled.

 

Yes, I do, version 7.1208.101.124. I get the toggle icons as well, though toggling didn't fix the problem at the time.