G53SW-A1 touchpad problem

I recently bought a G53SW-A1, and it had a very strange issue with the Synaptics touchpad. A few minutes or hours after a cold boot the cursor would start jumping around when tapping and especially double tapping. It would not register tapping, or it would register zooming in or out instead of two finger scrolling, etc. Hoping it was a software issue, I tried several versions of the Synaptics drivers, Nvidia drivers and every other driver I could think of.

Much of the information came from the thread dealing with this issue on the G73JW. However nothing related to software helped. At best the issue would surface a couple of hours after booting up instead of within minutes.

So I took the palmrest off (which is MUCH easier on the G53SW than on the G73SW). I noticed the touchpad is covered by one large silver tape and a smaller one. It also had a foam pad RIGHT in the middle of it.

I removed the smaller piece of silver tape since it made a connection between the larger silver tape and the metal plate supporting the touchpad buttons. I also removed the foam pad and reattached it at another point on the palm rest away from the touchpad. This prevents the palm rest from rattling, however it does not affect the touchpad.

I am happy to report that it's been 3 days since the surgery, and the touchpad functions perfectly. It does not have any of the erratic behaviour.