Laitude E6400: Jumping cursor from oversensitive touchpad. Help.

Hi-

I am unable to type more than a couple of minutes without my cursor repositioning itself. The problem is inadvertent "contact" between my palm/lower thumb and the touchpad. I put contact in quotes because it's not even clear whether actual contact or mere proximity is the problem.

Brief background: I worked with Dell service and we agreed that the problem is an overly sensitive trackpad. We tried changing the TrackPad settings to no avail. They authorized a replacement trackpad which was installed by a service tech (along with a new mother board after he accidentally killed the computer while replacing the trackpad).

Result: Still no improvement.

FYI: My Touchpad settings are Touch Sensitivity 6/8; Tap to Click: On/Medium Speed; TouchCheck: Enabled/Minumum. Scroll: enabled

As you can from the above, I use the TrackPad for all my control (including selection). I have tried the most obvious solution -- turning up the TouchCheck -- and find that it renders the tap to select function useless. At this setting, it often takes 2-3 clicks to make a selection which is obviously unacceptable.

I would appreciate any thoughts on how to fix this. Glad to provide more information if that would help.

Thanks.

 

If it is a Synaptics touchpad, go to their website and install the latest drivers/utilities. If it is a Dell, go to their website and do the same. You could use a mouse and turn the pad off too. I usually leave mine on when using a mouse most of the time.

 

Thx for the quick response.

Touchpad is Alps. With the Dell phone tech, we updated the drivers to the latest version.

I agree that using a mouse is a good workaround. However, I like to type with the laptop in my lap, so I'm hoping to figure out the fix for this problem

Much thanks.

 

Try reducing the Touch Sensitivity. I'm using 4/10.

John

 

Thanks for the suggestion. I'd tried to no avail.

Though, I may be confused. My setting of 6/8 was closer to Heavy Sensitivity which I took to mean heavier pressure required to activate the touchpad, i.e. greater touchpad sensitivity. My belief is that lowering it to 4/8, I actually increased the touchpad sensitivity making it even more susceptible to my wrist when typing.

Glad to try again -- or head down another path.

Thanks.

 

Try a google search for "alps touchpad". Dell drivers are not always the latest.

 

This just started happening on mine after installing the most recent touchpad driver off the Dell website (release date 1/14/2010). I found that new driver now caused my scroll button to act buggy (if there is a text box on the screen, and the cursor is on the text box and I scroll, it scrolls the cursor within the textbox and doesn't scroll my window properly... if that makes sense). When I reverted back to the old driver, I got the jumping cursor problem. Never happened before. No clue what's going on here...

edit: Also, my touchpad has always been disabled... I just use the stick and stick buttons.

 

1- uninstall the touchpad drivers
2- restart your computer
3- Install Dell touchpad driver A09, if you run Windows 7, look under Vista.

 

Hi --

Glad to give this a try. Would you mind explaining what is does and why it works.

Thanks.

 

No idea, but for me it's the best touchpad drivers I touched for the E6400.