Aspire 5102 Touchpad problem

Yesterday my aspire 5102 developed a problem with the synaptics touchpad. Apparently the left button is stuck in a 'contact' state even though as far as I can see the button is not physically depressed. An extra clue is that when I move the mouse over the screen with the touchpad, Windows is in 'selection' mode, that confirms to me that the touchpad driver detects that the left mouse button is pressed, it also shows this in the touchpad tray icon.

The only way to move the cursor now is to disable the touchpad buttons but doing this unfortunately means that I can no longer scroll up down or tap ! I read on another forum that perhaps this issue is caused by some debris stuck under the button touching the contact switch, I tried using compressed air but it did no good. I sent off an email to acer tech support this morning and I await what they think it is but I am posting here to see if anyone else has had this happen to them before and what did you do to fix it?

I am willing to take this notebook apart and look at the touchpad module but I unfortunately don't have the service manual for the 5100 series, anyone know where I can download it? This is very frustrating as now all I can really effectively use is my external USB mouse and I cannot use that everywhere I go.

If anyone of you guys has any suggestions or can help in anyway I would greatly appreciate it...

 

I know this is a dumb reply because I am sure you have tried it....

How about reinstalling the Synaptics touchpad driver?

 

I tried that three times and no luck...

EDIT : I managed to find the service manual for the 5110/5100/3100 series and it shows just how I need to disassemble my notebook, I hope I don't break anything when I do this.

 

I just wanted to post an update on this problem.

Today I partially disassembled my 5102(thanks to the service manual ) and I couldn't see anything wrong with the touchpad so I put it back together and just sprayed some electrical contact cleaner onto the touchpad switch. This made no difference to the problem but I discovered when I uninstalled the synaptics touchpad driver and just used the built-in windows PS/2 driver the touchpad worked like it is supposed to!! This is leading me to believe that nothing is wrong with my touchpad and perhaps something is corrupted in windows itself as the synaptics driver is causing this erroneous behavior.

 

Hi Evolution,
one question... Do you have problem with the keyboard of your Acer? I mean, when you press a key,the keyboard go down a little bit or it's fixed, it doesn't move? In mine, it seems that the keyboard it's not fixed well. I want to know if it is normal or it is only a problem of my pc before contact Acer...

Thank you in advance

P.s.: Excuse for my English, but I'm italian

 

Hello Evolution,

I know it´s been some time since you posted in this thread, but I wonder if you could email me the service manual for the Aspire 5102.

Thanks anyway

 

Hi, I have just brought an acer and the touchpad right button stuck too.
How do you uninstall the synaptics driver and use the ps2 driver.
Thank.

 

All you have to do go into control panel and into add remove programs(winXP) programs and features(vista) and uninstall the synaptics software. That is all there is to it.

However in my case it was just a driver error and reinstalling windows fixed the problem. If after this your touchpad still doesn't work then I would suggest you return it, as you said you just bought it and a failing touchpad would be a something you shouldn't have to deal with.

 

alright Tee & Evo. long time no see.
my touch pad just went nuts on me,over sensitive even with palm check on and the sensitiveness turned down. i used the repair function in xp and all is well now.
EDIT found that if you have the touch pad set to turn off when you use a usb mouse this can muck up the drivers.as my scroll button stopped working after i used a usb mouse.xp must be having trouble with the new drivers !

 

You can find it here.

 

I am having the same problem with the left button, only I can feel my left button is loose and almost stuck in the down position at one corner... Do you think uninstalling the driver will work for me? I am running Windows XP. Is the ps2 driver something I have to install separately? I am soooo not comfortable with taking the thing apart to fix the button so I have been using a cordless mouse for the time being...

Thanks for your help!
Elena

 

The ps2 driver is not something you have to install separately because as soon as you remove the synaptics driver windows will default to it's built in ps2 driver for the touchpad. The same thing happens when you install a fresh non-factory copy of windows onto a notebook, windows uses the ps2 driver until you install the synaptics driver.

I remember on my very first notebook (years ago) when the touchpad button got stuck (physically stuck in the down position) then eventually the touchpad stopped working but I don't know if this is the same situation for you. However my case with the 5102 was slightly different as I eventually found it was a driver error and not something physically wrong with the device.