G73JH Touchpad fixed....

Crossposting frorm the ROG forums:

All, this is a +1 for tape removal 100% resolving my touchpad issues.

Let me first give a bit of background so that you can understand what needs to be done.

Initially, when my touchpad was messing up, I tried all of the different software solutions with never any lasting success. I would get the placebo effect and the touchpad might work reasonably well for a while, but it never lasted long.

Recently, I saw some of these posts indicating the issue might be a hardware issue, and I started looking at the easiest way I could try some of the posted solutions.

Initially, I just popped out the front 3 screws on the bottom edge so I could pop the touchpad up enough to get a look beneath it. Doing this, I was able to see the tape surrounding the touchpad, so I decided to attempt to maneuver into the case and start removing tape. I ended up pulling my hard drive and removing a few more screws, and I ended up able to get at all of the tape on the underside of the touchpad. To make a long story short, I pulled all of the tape off and to also ensure that the touchpad wasn't touching anything else on the interior of the case I put a couple of pieces of foam tape in the case around the touchpad (not touching, just to prevent the touchpad internals from touching the chassis).

After being initially hopeful that my touchpad issues were resolved, the problems resurfaced and seemingly worse than ever.

I had hoped I wouldn't have to do a full teardown to address this issue, but ultimately that's what I ended up doing.

When I got to the underside of the touchpad, I noticed that there was a significant amount of tape gunk left where I pulled the tape off. After considerable scrubbing, I was able to remove 99% of the tape residue and I crossed my fingers in the hopes that the touchpad performance would improve.

FINALLY. After reassembly, my touchpad has NONE of the prior issues, and I am pleased to finally report that I have a working touchpad. It amazes me that the decision to put tape on and around the bottom of the touchpad caused such issues and that through an entire generation of G73JH laptops the issue was never identified and remedied.

While it's a bit of a daunting task considering that pretty much the entire laptop has to be disassembled and a number of fragile ribbon cables need to be removed and reattached, ultimately the fix makes using the laptop much more enjoyable. Instead of smacking my laptop every time the touchpad arbitrarily loses its mind, I can just enjoy the amazing performance this machine offers.

I don't recommend disassembly if you aren't prepared and haven't at least watched the disassembly youtube video multiple times, but I will say that the end result (for me at least) was well worth the pain.

 

Yup this method does work I mentioned about this and how to fix it here a while back pages 9 and 10 on the G73 Touchpad issues main post and others have had success with this also but it can still return as the problem seems to be a mixture of hardware and software issues along with heat and humidity.

I had no problems for several months after fixing the sticky tape problem but after a factory reset they returned and the recent synaptics drivers tweaked seem to have fixed it again. Also you are claiming to have fixed the touchpad issues but what works for you might not work for others.

 

Oh, I understand completely. I'm not saying it's a 100%, fix all, never re-occurring problem solution, but I truly believe it's a full fix for mine.

If you could have seen just HOW BAD my touchpad was prior to disassembling and cleaning the bottom of the touchpad (it took a while by the way, that tape gunk was extremely stubborn), you would understand my elation.

My touchpad wasn't just bad, it was completely awful. I couldn't use the touchpad for more than a few minutes without it losing its mind and no longer responding to my touches. When this would happen, all touches were being registered in moodpad as being on the far left edge of the pad, and frequently would get so messed up that a reboot was necessary to bring it back to life for a few minutes before it went nuts again.

To compare the before and after is impossible. I have a functional pad now, whereas before it was a constant nightmare.

The key imo is not the removal of the tape, but the thorough cleaning of the underside of the pad, ensuring that there is no residue on the surface and that all of the (5?) pieces of silver fabric tape are completely removed.

As I said, I removed the tape maybe a week ago, and it did not resolve my issue. It was the full disassembly and thorough cleaning of the bottom of the pad that ultimately fixed the issue for me.

 

I agree it is the same with how Asus applied the paste - P*ss Poorly.

I had one of the stickers actually covering part of the right touchpad button so everytime I was clicking it would make a sticking noise and feeling it was getting caught everytime drove me nuts until I decided I had to rip it apart and fixed about 4 things while I was inside!

My problem seems to be different to yours also because the touchpad film for me worked better once I had actually removed the tape itself as the film was at an angle because of it, there are a variety of different ways in the G73 Touchpad issues post because every case differs I believe people have had great success with the wedge option also.

Since removing the stickers as long as I have the latest drivers I dont see touchpad issues so it is worth a shot if you are confident with dissassembly if it doesnt work just put the tape back on.

 

Oh totally. As for the wedge option, I did try that also. I used some rubberized foam tape that I had here, and I used it to act as a spacer and keep the touchpad base from touching anything else internal.

After doing that though and removing the cloth tape around the touchpad, I was still experiencing issues. I did still leave a piece of the foam tape on each side of the touchpad to prop it up slightly, so that might also be helping.

In any case, what I don't understand at all is why the tape was put there in the first place. The tape on the bottom edge of the bottom of the touchpad was covering up a couple of ribbon cables for the buttons, but is completely unnecessary. ALL of the 4 other pieces of tape that I removed served absolutely no purpose. The bottom of the touchpad is SOLID. I put a LOT of pressure on it when I was trying to rub the tape gunk off of it using windex and paper towel, and it's not like the tape was serving any viable purpose at all. There just was no reason for it to be there!

As I said, I really hadn't planned on completely taking apart my laptop as the ribbon cables and keyboard removal worried me, but after investing countless hours in attempting fixes that other people had mentioned having luck with I decided to just do it right and take it apart.

It's remarkable exactly how much better the pad is working now, and I definitely recommend the disassembly. It's also a good time to give the interior a good cleaning and even do a repaste if you need it.

The biggest trouble I had really was figuring out how all of the ribbon cable connectors worked and being very careful removing the speaker cable under the keyboard. The double sided tape on my keyboard surprisingly was less stubborn than expected and my keyboard came out unscathed.

 

Yep its a very poor design and one of the worst touchpad I have ever used along with it being too big and when trying to use WSAD you end up causing the bloody thing to stop responding total knightmare thing at least this fix stops the sticking because that is infuriating!

Good to know how to do it though and once you have done it once you can do it well 10 times like me although I plan not to open mine up again now not unless I bite the bullet and buy the 940xm