M15X : Erratic mouse and keyboard behavior when computer tilted

Hey all,

I had posted a couple of questions about this in the main All Powerful M15X topic but got no answers. I've now confirmed that this is a problem with the M15X and that it's easily fixed.

The problem was that if I lay on the couch with the notebook on my lap such that they keyboard was angled towards me, at an angle of about 45 degrees from flat, then the mouse buttons and keyboard would start to behave erratically. The simplest way to see this happening is this

1. Right click on something so a pop up menu appears
2. Pick up the computer and slowly tilt the entire computer towards you
3. At about 45 degrees the menu will vanish as if you left clicked somewhere else.

What struck me is strange is that this only ever happened when you hit a specific angle of tilt.


I dug around the Device Manager and found something called "ST Micro Screen Detection" or words to that effect. I googled this and found it's a driver for an accelerometer and it has caused issues on other Dells. I have absolutely no idea what on earth there's an accelerometer in the M15X for, but if you get rid of that driver, you get rid of the problem.

Note that you can't disable the driver. The disable button was grayed out for me. I had to physically uninstall the driver. I have not rebooted yet so I have no idea if this PITA is going to come back or not.

Hope that helps any of you fellow couch potatoes.

 

thanks for persevering with the diagnosis and resolution of this issue: I also found the accelerometer program in the program listing and uninstalled it along with the driver as per your post.

 

I have the problem too...I think the accelerometer is for hard drive protection. maybe its not a good idea to uninstall the driver. hopefully Dell will update this faulty driver soon..

 

Um, this is something random but when I glanced on the topic title, I thought it was written as " Erotic mouse & keyboard... "

I was like ? until I read closely... =P

 

LMAO :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
I have just know you are a girl and now I read your post lol.

 

Lol - sorry to dissapoint.

 

It could be, but I doubt it. I would hate to think that the hard drive in my computer is only protected IF I am running Windows and IF Windows has enough spare resource at the point in time that the computer is dropped to respond. Normally that kind of hard drive protection is built into the drive and uses its own sensors to park heads in the event of a sudden acceleration in any axis.

 

its a problem with the Free Fall protection that's also affecting Studio 15: perhaps a driver update will resolve the issue but no noew driver has been posted yet. Meanwhile, there's the trade off between day to day inconvenience of the accelerometer being overly sensitive versus the protection it offers in the unlikely event you drop the laptop. For me, Free Fall is a nice bonus feature, but only if it works with low imprint on the laptop: if its going to mess with my daily use, I can easily have a laptop without that bonus feature.