Here is something to try for the G73JH touchpad problem

As a work around for my touchpad issues I bought a trackball, I use it now instead of the mouse that came with my G73JH. The touchpad (when working properly) on these machines is really fantastic and I use it in conjunction with the trackball. When the touchpad becomes unresponsive I switch to the trackball, a quick flick of the ball will sometimes fix the lag in the touchpad. It has always struck me as weird that the touchpad would fail after a while, it is as if some background event triggers the touchpad failure, the system log revealed nothing. Since I would leave the trackball unused beside me for many minutes at a time it would go to sleep, I noticed the trackball would take a second or so to wake up each time I used it, this got me to looking at the power settings for the USB ports.

I went into control panel > system > device manager and expanded the ‘Universal Serial Bus controllers’ and unchecked the box that says ‘Allow the computer to shut off this device to save power’, it is under the power management tab. My machine has four entries I could do this on, 2 ‘Generic USB Hubs’ and 2 ‘USB Root Hubs’. I switched them all, you may only need to switch one. Also the problem will still exist when the machine is on battery power only, to fix it there as well you need to disable the USB selective suspend setting in whichever power management plan your using. If your touchpad seems OK for a while and then reverts back to its previous state, check the settings again, for some reason on mine it reverted back to the default again and I had to redo the settings.

I have no idea why USB power affects the touchpad but it has for sure helped my flakey touchpad problem. The touchpad will still get kind of sluggish sometimes after typing, now though it does not completely stop like it did before. More testing is needed but it does seem to be better.

I am using the 15.1.9.0 Synaptics driver, I found this one worked better than the latest one. I have turned off a lot of the stuff in the Synaptics settings, but I still use Chiral scrolling and Momentum. My keyboard is an HID Compliant Device and I have the latest Intel chipset drivers installed. Initially when I tried this fix I was on the beta 2 bios and I am now on the beta 3 bios, it seems to be the same. The touchpad still seems to be a bit sluggish after I type a paragraph or two, I use Google docs, not sure if that contributes to the problem.

Cheers and I hope it works for others. It is not perfect, I still get a few quick short zings horizontally once in a while but overall the touchpad is quite stable.

Edit January 15, 2011 - Although this seem to help for a while it is definitely not a permanent fix.

 

I dont get you people, who actually uses there touchpad lol....its a "Gaming laptop" and i doubt anyone actually playes a game using the touchpad lol. Although ive had no problems with mine!

 

This. I almost never used the touchpad, so i dont even know if i got issues with it... Anyways, thanks to MoreCoffee to share his workaround.

 

You may not "get" some of us, but there are those of us out there.

When the wife and i are kicking back on the couch, I will use the touchpad exclusively, and game just fine with them. Being on the couch doesn't facilitate a mouse pad and mouse, so it is touchpad all the way.

Furthermore, just because you commonly don't use something, doesn't make it ok to excuse its flaws. Even on the road not gaming, i would like to not have to drag a mouse around because a computer that i just paid $1200+ for couldn't include a working one....

 

I understand you dont want issues with it, either would I. I am just surprised alot of people are even using the touchpad.

 

i use the touchpad more than the mouse, it's a laptop and one of it's most important function is not working properly, people pay good money for these machines and the last thing they want is a broken touchpad.

 

i use the touchpad all the time except for gaming
so it is important to me too

 

Just coz its a gaming laptop doesn't mean its Touchpad is allowed to act like a piece of at times. This is an inexcusable issue and needs to be officially resolved ASAP. Though, I will try this as i am desperate for any type of "fix"

 

noww u see why the touchpad is necessary??? gaming laptop doesnt mean when powered on it goes to games then when done powerd off....

i would be trying this out...

 

My workaround on this issue on my g73jh-a2 touchpad (showed up after I've flashed my bios from 206 to 211) is that when it acts weird (by becoming a four directional arrow then acts as zoom-in or zoom-out), I just hit the right-click button below the touchpad. Seems to work for me for the mean time.

 

Has this thread become obsolete with the beta3 BIOS?

 

No, people are still having problems apparently.

 

i haven't tried none of the beta bios releases
becouse from the posts i've read it didn't helped
i am waiting for more official release

 

I was thinking about maybe buying an external touchpad, disassemble it and mount the thin membrane over the current touchpad, Its frustrating to see people say things like just clean it or its a gaming laptop, why would you need a touchpad, yes I play games with a mouse but 90% of the time im surfing the net checking email watching videos etc... and sitting outside or on the couch or in the car traveling , using a mouse is a pain when your not a desk using a mouse to game.

what a stupid thing to say, I quit using a desktop about 6 years ago and so touchpads are a big necessity! I dont even have a desk in my house

 

Thanks Morecoffee. Giving it a try.

 

giving it a try!

** i installed ubuntu today, ran it for like 10 hrs! and the touchpad didn't go crazy on me ! not even for a tiny bit!

 

Really, do me a favor and report back again in like 3 days and let us know if ur touch pad still works for ya. If it does, I'll give it a shot.

 

so far so good! but i had to take a break from Ubuntu! Back to windows for gaming! but i will report the situations as time goes by!

 

I'm fairly sure I've read this before on here somewhere, but to reiterate:

I fixed my touchpad by dropping the track speed 1 notch. Immediately it quit freezing, causing random undesired resizing of my browser, and a host of other annoyances.

And I realize that the question was old on page 1, but here's a real good reason you'd need to use the trackpad on the G73:

So I'm flyin' cross country tomorrow, and obviously I can't take my DESKTOP with me. . .

nuff' said

 

Beta 3 fixed almost all my problems - except the fact that pushing on the plastic BESIDE the touchpad will activate it. Warming it up will activate it too.

So turning up the palm detection helps a bit.

Also, I use the mouse for a lot of things, but when I'm typing a proposal up, it's faster to just use the touchpad to move things around, select words and such. Or, it is when the touchpad doesn't think I'm trying to two-finger scroll.

(I've also disabled all the other useless touchpad gestures).

 

Thank you or your help

 

well. used windows 7 for about 3 hours and bamm! touchpad madness all over again heheh!

ran ubuntu all day today! not a single issue with the touchpad, at one point it scared me, but then i realized that i was touching the pad with my thumb while trying to use it.. hehe , this is a big pad!

but so far so good..

 

Idk, i hate this mousepad and it's problems, but i just disabled every feature on it so that it'll stop randomly zooming in/out. now it just sits there when its broken and then it'll come back to life later...

I need a usable touchpad ASUS!!! What were you thinking!?