M17x R3 trackpad not responding.

I've had my m17x for almost a year now. The trackpad worked perfectly until it stopped working few months ago. I didn't really care because I use a mouse anyways. But I still want to find out a way to fix it in case I don't have my mouse.

I've downloaded the synaptic driver and it worked. But when I turned the laptop back on again it stopped working. I've re-installed the driver and no response. Also, it will start working at random times (i.e when i close the laptop and open it back up) It will work for a few minutes and go back dead again. Is there any way to fix this problem? Thanks

 

Hi pswon,

Try the basic troubleshooting steps in this article:

Alienware Laptops Touchpad not working

I know you already tried re installing the synaptics driver, but try it again following the steps in that article.

Also, try a Clean Boot to make sure it's not a program running on the background that is conflicting with the driver. Click on the following link to learn how to perform a clean start:

How to perform a Clean Boot?

Let me know how it goes.

 

Thanks Natalia J. I went on and re-installed the drivers and restarted. Worked like magic. Maybe my drivers were out of date. But this was the same scenario as last time. It worked and it might not work again :/ Just hoping for the best. Anyways I will keep you updated in case it does not work. Thanks Again!!

 

You are welcome Sometimes drivers may conflict with windows updates, that's probably what happened here.

 

Hello Natalia. When I opened my m17x this morning the trackpad did not work again. Is the problem because I always close my laptop instead of shutting it off? Anyways I restarted the computer and worked again. Do you know how I find out what the problem is?

 

If you have a mouse plugged into the laptop, the trackpad will deactivate. My R2's trackpad will always be working at startup, then about 30 seconds in, it will deactivate. If I unplug the mouse transceiver, the trackpad comes back online.

 

I went to AlienTouch and then figured out that the 'Disable TouchPad when external USB mouse is attached' was checked. After I unchecked that it started working. But on the other hand, it somehow automatically checks by itself lol

 

Yeah, mine does that too. I tried disabling the Alientouch service but it still auto-checks itself. I think that setting is rooted deep in Command Centers program so that you don't lose all trackpad functionality in case your mouse goes bad.

 

hmm thats weird, as far as i can remember that annoying setting was on for me and i disabled the alientouch and its worked fine with my G9x ever since

 

Its most likely a driver issue

 

It's a hardware problem,call Dell SAT

 

Have you tried disabling this feature another way?

You can do it through the control panel. Or you can activate/deactivate the touchpad using Fn+F12. Not sure if it would make any difference though.

 

I did a little digging on my machine, and found out that there's a couple linked settings between AlienTouch and the Mouse Control Panel applet, so try this out for some further testing:

• Open up Control Panel and click on the Mouse Control Panel Item.

• If the Synaptics driver is properly installed, you should have 6 tabs, the last one being Device Settings. Click on that one.

• Is the setting Disable internal pointing device when external USB pointing device is attached there and checked? When I checked this option and opened AlienTouch, Disable TouchPad when external USB mouse is attached was also checked, and when I unchecked said option in AlienTouch, the option was unchecked from the Mouse Control Panel applet.

Like Luis said, if you haven't tried disabling this feature another way, try the steps I wrote and see what happens. Not sure if AlienTouch ties in directly to this driver, but I'm very familiar with this driver thanks to my job, and can confidently say that it ties directly to the driver. If this also doesn't work, then it could be a driver issue or perhaps faulty hardware. Did you run the Diagnostics tool and see what it had to say?

 

My alientouch/alien command center stopped working. When I tried to open them it gave me an error. Again I restarted my computer today and my touchpad works again... I will wait again and see..