Beta BIOS - Possible Missing Keystroke Fix

Mine crapped out again just now. *Sigh*. Was working fine for a few days.

 

What do you mean by crapped out? Can you explain in more detail?
I was using the laptop with the touchpad only today and i can say i havent had a single missed keystroke yet, but i started having problems with the touchpad on both 15.2.7 & 15.2.11 - the touchpad would become very unresponsive at times; i have to press/sweep a few times hard for it to register... never had that happen before. Is it similar with yours?

 

If you are still having problems it most likely is the flexing of the palm rest. "You need the wedge"....

 

My palms dont rest on the palmrest when i use the touchpad so thats not it... But it doesnt really matter so much to me anymore, i rarely use the touchpad now, so its good enough as it is and ill prolly soon sell this laptop anyway.

 

My Fn-F9 was broken, removing the Synaptics driver and the ATK package and then reinstalling with the nothing plugged into the USB ports fixed it.

Even if you type without touching the palm rest it will still fail if you grasp your machine and move it on your lap. There is a tendency to hold it in the palm rest regions to avoid the keyboard when you move it.

 

I used my laptop on my lap at home last night. I had packed it from one room to another and sat down on the couch. The touchpad started behaving like HellCry described. It went from working perfectly sitting on a desk to quitting when it was on my lap. I think MoreCoffee is onto something with the clamping pressure causing erroneous input to the TP. I'm going to try the "MoreCoffee Wedge" and see where I get to with that.

 

Where can I get some coreplast? I am located in Norway so I would need to buy it online I suppose, but I can't find any.

 

Anything will work as the wedge, just as long as it is a bit spongy so it will stay wedged. If you had some of that really dense foam that is used for packing things in, it might work, the stuff they use on the corners of things. You might have to cut it to the right height though.

 

My missed keystrokes were always present unfortunately. They have been much better with the latest BIOS and ATK updates, but not perfect. The touchpad was working as it should over the weekend, but as soon as I go to class, it would stop responding randomly and the scroll function would fail all together. Sometimes if I moved up or down it would dance in a zig-zag pattern. Back to the drawing board for me, if anything I'll RMA at my local centre in the summer when I'm off school.

 

Do you understand what coreplast is? I didn't. Once I saw the pictures I realized what it was. It's just the corrugated plastic. It's cardboard like what a shipping box is but it's made out of plastic instead of paper. We have some laying around at work. They make signs with it to stick on the wall. It comes in sheets like poster board for making projects for school and such. Does that help? You may have already known it by that name... I didn't realize that was what it was called.

 

Neighbourhoods have lots of it in the form of realtor signs...

 

Yea, I take what I said back too sorta of.

Its true that the response time, and the movements feel a lot smoother, but what happened was instead of my touchpad going crazy like it used to with earlier versions (put hand in center and curser sometimes goes crazy or the rotation and scroll icon appears when I didn't want to do either), it just stops functioning for a few seconds. It literally won't work or move.

This doesn't happen often though but it does happen. As long as it is working though, I have no doubt in saying this is the best touchpad I've ever had. Now it just needs to always work.

edit - either way, I'm fine with my touchpad, how about some audio upgrades for us

 

first video upgrade !
i don't have problems with the creative package
why do i even speak when these words doesn't go to the right man

 

Oh, okay! I'll take a look around tomorrow to see what I can find. Thanks! I take it that the annoying clicking sound the palmrest on the left side makes when being pressed and released also disappears when I do this fix? That would be a welcome side-effect

 

That clicking comes from having caveman hands.

 

Yes it should help the click on the touchpad. Mine developed that weird noise too, I posted about it here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/asu...ubwoofer-loose-please-help-2.html#post6901160

 

MoreCoffee Did you wedge both sides of the palm rest or just the left side?

 

i haven't experienced clicking sound on the palmrest but i have when clicking on the left touchpad button.... i don't know how to explain it
it was like it was touching someting bellow the button like plastic
but that was a period , for now it is fine

EDIT: oo i see that ALLurGroceries was talking about the same thing ... i thought it was for the palmrest

 

Well I reinstalled both the ATK Package and the new drivers and my Fn+F9 doesn't work, and that's with no USB attached at all. Not that big a deal since I never use it but meh, is there a registry fix or something for that?

 

haha mine worked yesterday and not today ....it is definitelly synaptic thing

 

to fix my fn+f9 issue, I just reinstall synaptics.

 

Hehe, I see what you did there

Thanks for the run-through!

 

I just did the left side of mine and yes if you have the clicking sound it stops that as well. Mine would click once in a while, now it doesn't at all.

For those of you that don't have coreplast I think almost anything will work. The trick is to get something that has a bit of spring to it so it stays wedged. Even if it did not have any spring it might be OK, you would just need to have the height of the wedge just right. Ideally when you press the palm rest down to the latched position the wedge will touch the palm rest when it is about an 1/8 of an inch away or so from being seated. If your wedge compresses by a 16th or so you would still have a 16th of compression. With 2 pieces of coreplast in mine the left palm rest has a very slight elevation when compared compared to the unwedged right side.

Even if you do not get it right the first time it is so easy to do you can just try it again with more wedge or a different material.

My tp has not failed since I made this mod on March 4.

 

now i understand the meaning of your name
staying in the long nights ... figuring how to fix the touchpad problem
"give me more coffee , more coffee i need to stay awake and fix this problem"

 

For everyone with the Fn+F9 issue, just use the 15.2.7 driver instead of the 15.2.11 - the 15.2.11 is really no better when it comes to occasional touchpad stubborness on top of it missing a few features the 15.2.7 has...

 

yeah i imagined that gary like always giving us some beta products
i am back to 15.2.7 and fn+f9 works and i have all the feautures and a new beautiful interface

 

nah, 15.2.11 works wonders for me. It defilently responds a lot better, but It does get unresponsive for like a total of 10 seconds and acts up over a 5 minute period but then it goes back to normal for a few hours.

A version 15.2.12 would be apprciated with all the features........

Ignore what I said though, me wants better audio software, and mite wants better vbios xD

but seriously, I appreciate what U Gary and the others are doing for us. If it wasn't for you, I would of been gotten rid of mine and went with the boring looking laptop known as sager.

 

lol I'd like 2 finger scroll ... *cries*.

 

@Xellon well i appreciate gary's job too but imagine if they had perfect product at the beggining ... none of this waiting would happen
are you sure it is not just a placebo that 15.2.11 is better

i have my 2 finger scroll and three fingers flick

but i couldn't see three fingers click for my winamp

EDIT: i would like to mentioned sth that i have experienced as i speak...
i had my laptop in my lap and i've changed the palmrest to a one degree higher and my vertical scrolling wasn't functioning like it should(sometimes register ... sometimes not)
althought i've tried lowering it one degree from the default and same thing happened so the default option only fixed it...(althought still can't register well sometimes)

 

15.2.7 is working as well for me as 15.2.11 as well. I've gone to 15.2.7 again because of the two finger scrolling. Also, my touchpad doesn't register nearly as well sitting on my lap as it does sitting on a desk. I wonder if the laptop is occasionally registering input through the bottom of the laptop.

 

True. G73 was more of a trial and error thing which kinda sucked for us. I have high hopes for their G74.... I won't comment on the looks

 

Re-quoting myself w/ the 2 finger scrolling info

 

Will installing BIO 213 on my JH help the mousepad issue at all?

 

@evoeight04 if you read back a few pages you will see that people have had good results for the most part, but you also need to install the latest atk drivers and (possibly) the latest synaptics drivers. Hit the first page for the download links. Good luck!

 

Day 6 with my wedge fix in and the touchpad is still working perfectly, 90% of the time on my lap.

 

Updated to bios 213. Din notice much change except fewer typos, could be just placebo effect. However, recent check with event viewer then I realised I have this error all along even before flashing to 213.

: The embedded controller (EC) did not respond within the specified timeout period. This may indicate that there is an error in the EC hardware or firmware or that the BIOS is accessing the EC incorrectly. You should check with your computer manufacturer for an upgraded BIOS. In some situations, this error may cause the computer to function incorrectly.

I understand that some users faced this error after 213 but mine has been there since dunno when. This error showed up 160 in the last 7 days (updated to 213 3 days ago). Anyone have a fix beside waiting for better bios?

 

No idea, I just know the laptop works 100% fine till I put it on my lap (probably due to pressure around the palm rest area).

 

Didn't work for me.

 

I guess I need to investigate more or just take all possible registry dumps relating to Synaptics so someone can compare them.

EDIT: Here it is

http://www.mediafire.com/?s5585oju8wrp8a7

http://www.mediafire.com/?fu3fbtbb6loq2m1

The first one is from CURRENT_USER and second one is from LOCAL_MACHINE.

I think the LOCAL_MACHINE one are just default settings. Back-up your own and delete it completely before trying mine to make sure it does something. Also, I'd reboot or terminate the synaptics executable and reopen it just to be sure it loads the changes. I'm not responsible for any failed touchpad due to this.

 

One other thing I did when I was inserting the wedge in my machine was take the battery out. While it was out I held the power button down to completely remove any residual power. I read somewhere that to get a laptop to completely reset the battery must come out.

 

Holding the power just releases the charge, preventing any static damage while handling internal components... it doesnt "reset" the laptop in any way. If you removed the Bios battery on a motherboard that should reset the Bios...
I tried adding a piece of insulating plastic foil under my touchpad (to cover the entire underside - where the metalic-looking foil is - basically the entire underside of the touchpad board) and it has been working for 2 days without problems now. If anyone wants to try it, report if it works for you.

 

can you do a guide on how to do the insulating plastic procedure? and where can we buy it from . Thanks!

 

As insulator foil i just used 2 layers of the plastic foil that is used in every household to wrap food (you know - the plastic transparent foil that you wrap your sandwich in ). You just take off the top cover (video on how to dissasemble a G73JH is here on youtube, so it shouldnt be too hard for anyone to get this far - just follow it till you get the top cover off) and just cover the touchpad part by taping 2 layers of that foil over it and reassemble it. Its a simple solution, but my touchpad has yet to show any signs of rebellion.

 

It seems HellCry that are machines are both fixed yet we used different methods. I am at 9 days without a problem so I think I can say safely say mine is repaired. The question is why did both of these solutions work. Perhaps the shims in mine lifted the bottom of the touchpad so it does not touch whatever is under it. Your solution does the same but with the layer of insulation.

Has anyone else tried inserting the support under the left palmrest as I did? If you did, did it work for you?

 

I am going to try tonight either your solution or hellCry's.

HellCry,

Is the plastic wrap the one that is totally transparent and glossy or the one that is matte and kind of opaque?

 

Is anyone else getting the "your machine is trying to post a message" or something like that message. I have had this happen twice now, a reboot fixes it. When the message warning is there I noticed there is a slight lack of response on the chiral scrolling functionality. The message does not appear on the screen but there is an icon on the task bar indicating there is one there to be read. The message does not show up though when I click to read it.

Also, which may be related, I have lost all of my own settings in the Synaptics settings a couple of times, they revert to the default.

 

I did this, and it seems to have worked...although I've said this before. I'll report back in a day or 2.

 

I had something similar happen after I installed the latest Synaptic TP drivers from the Synaptic site.
I think it has something to do with a minor compatibility problem.

Here is how i fixed the error:
I went to the synaptics directory in program files, found the file that was issuing the message (SynTPEnh.exe)
and right clicked for properties and enabled "Run as Administrator".

I have seen no messages since. I hope that helps ya!

 

Thanks, I'll give that a try.

 

We only have transparent ones so thats what i used.