Keyboard Lag Debugging

Not sure is this data found by me can help. Doing some test about poll rate of my touchpad, it gave me a 80Hz rate constant in either recent reboot (not touchpad problem) and when the touchpad start jumping by itself. On both cases I have 80 Hz of poll rate. The difference in problem-state was the software used lost the strokes as my touchpad did. I mean, when I lost the touchpad control, I can not register the touchpad poll. When recover, it return to 80 hz. As comnparison, the USB mouse has 120 hz rate.

Comparing this number, this number are similar to alienware m17, which by bios update (because of bad touchpad performance) the increased the poll from 20 Hz to 80 hz.

 

FIX THIS GODAMMIT!

...sorry.. sorry... need to breathe in. No, really, can't believe a device as elemental as the keyboard just won't work with the G73JH. I'm currently flying without the Synaptics drivers and using Touchfreeze which does not work on remote desktop sessions or logmein sessions, plus it is not very good when you try to type fast.

So next time I'll try to uninstall ATK and install Synaptics and see how I go without.. no forget it, I use ATK keys a lot.

Grr.. I had hoped they would fix keyboard lag before GSOD. Really, I game on this thing but that's like 10% of the time I use it at best.

 

How do you access the polling rate for the touchpad?

 

OK. I've been working the crap out of this issue. We are not correct about the ATK package alleviating the problem. My keyboard still misses keystrokes and gets laggy with the ATK package removed completely. The ONLY thing that eliminates it on my system is running with the stock MS driver or disabling the pointing device in BIOS.

I searched through the registry carefully looking for anything we could tweak. I was hoping to find a polling parameter. There are none that I can find. Everything I found in the registry is available in the touchpad settings interface.

At this point its looking like I'm still at the mercy of Asus to find the bug and eliminate it. I guess they need to modify the polling rate in BIOS or get Synaptics to modify the driver or something. I wish we could get our hands on a completely unlocked BIOS. There are a lot of things in there that can be tweaked. The BIOS we have can't be tweaked at all. Everything is hidden.

I agree that these drivers work on dozens of laptops and exhibit zero problems on hundreds of thousands of laptops. There must be something specific about this laptop that needs to be corrected. Asus might be able to work around it with a custom driver but something in the BIOS or hardware is probably the root cause.

 

Did you look in Device Manager and check the resources used for "Keyboard Device Filter"?

 

What if it is the hardware (JH touchpad) + driver (Synaptics) combination that is problematic here?
Im wondering if the JW upper panel (the panel that holds the touchpad and all the buttons is similar enough to be used on the JH? If that worked we could just order the JW panel and use that (and even get a better touchpad)...
I know its a long shot but can you check this Quadzilla (or anyone else that has both the JH and JW)... Pretty please ?

 

Gary could also answer this if he looked into it...
Im sure that some people would be interested in doing this just for the touchpad if nothing else...
Hes here now so would you ask him for us Chastity?

 

I fixed my lag issue by updating the Asus drivers, like the ATK Package (1.0005 at the time)

 

No matter which ATK or Synaptics driver i use its pretty much the same (some are marginally better than others, but none completely solve the problem).

 

I thought this was resolved if you disabled the trackpad in the bios and used an external mouse.

Wouldn't that be an acceptable solution for heavy typists?

Since I always use external Keyboard and mouse I don't have this issue but since we know there is a problem for many people and they has been no consistent resolution of the problem, it seems carrying a small BT or USB mouse around is a small price to pay to alleviate such frustration.

Cheers,

 

Same for me.

Disabling in BIOS does fix it, but forcing us to use an external mouse just so we can use our laptops is pretty ridiculous. Not to mention that laptops are supposed to have functioning touchpads. Its a basic common feature in all laptops. Personally I use a USB mouse a lot, but occasionally its much easier not to have to drag it out and find a suitable surface when I'm just checking a website or ordering pizza.

 

I know it's not the best solution (or fair) but I like to live as stress free life as possible so if using a mouse takes some stress away I'm there.

Hopefully this issue will be resolved soon.

Cheers,

 

Some of us still want to be able to use the touchpad when we want to...
Imagine using the laptop on a train or somewhere where you have no surface to use the mouse on comfortably, or just laying in my bed and surfing the web i dont want to use my MX Performance...

Most of the time having it disabled in Bios is just fine, but sometimes i get real frustrated that i am not able to use it.

 

Fact of the matter is, we bought a LAPTOP. It comes with a touchpad and a keyboard. The touchpad and keyboard are expected to be 100% functional ALL of the time. This isn't something for conjecture or workarounds. It either does or does not.

In the case of the G73Jh it is KNOWN that with SOME units, NEITHER the keyboard or the trackpad work 100% of the time. THAT is the real issue.

I, and many others, are not interested in workarounds or software hacks, or anything else other than a working keyboard and a working trackpad 100% of the time we want to use them.

This is no different than the GSOD issue. People complained that they would get a GSOD without the Asus-supplied drivers. They felt they did not get 100% of what they paid for if they coudn't run the ATi generic Mobility drivers. A lot of people said "Don't run Furmark and you won't have issues" and they were ALL WRONG! There is a known issue with the thermal paste from the factory. Some people said, "just don't run Furmark" and again, they were WRONG! People repasted and max temps don't go anywhere near max and people are happy.

Fact of the matter is this is a well known issue with not only the G73Jh, but also many other models. Once they figure this out, hopefully they will push the fix to those other models to make those owners happy as well.

I was told this is a priority issue, and I really hope that is the case and they figure this out soon. It will be nice to have the machine operate as it should and be functional.

 

Yeah of course there are a couple of good workarounds, which I fine, but ultimately I want it working perfectly. Not much to ask since it's new. I am also optimist so I know we'll get a solution eventually. I just fail to understand why the vBIOS was fixed before this.

 

It's embarrassing when a GAMING laptop crashes while GAMING...

 

As Chastity said, this is a GAMING machine. What is a GAMING machine if people can't game because the GPU is failing?

And also, as said before, only a few have this keyboard issue.

And Gary did say he is working on a solution.

But if you were to say, why do any of these issues exist and not resolved before being sold retail? Then I would agree with you. The vBios issue, the Fn Esc fix with Bios 209, for some the keyboard etc should all have been resolved months ago.

From all the threads I've read, every combination has failed from drivers, new keyboard, keyboard filter and messing with the touchpad. I have not read of a single user solution to this. Just gotta sit tight and wait and see if Gary and his team can reproduce what you are experiencing and find a fix for it. Or sell your G73jh and see if a G73jw changes it or buy a different notebook. Sucks, but the G73jh definitely was released prematurely and Asus messed up.

 

Well if you really want to avoid the touchpad but you need portability still, try this mouse: Newegg.com - GIGABYTE GM-M7700 Noble Black 3+3 Buttons 4 Directional Scrolling 2.4GHz Wireless Laser 1600 dpi Mouse for Notebook
The mouse is small enough to fit on the palmrest and tracks perfectly. After hours of use my large hands don't feel cramped or strained at all. It has a DPI switcher, so it's even ideal for gaming. Just an option to consider if you have to turn off your touchpad.

 

Great find and certainly worth noting, however, as you can see about some folks are not willing to use an interim workaround and are willing to suffer to make the point. I agree ASUS needs to fix this, and soon, but until they do something like this might help.

Cheers,

 

Ok I got an Issue here, I been doing lots of typing lately and this keyboard lag is killing me, since the only real workaround to fix this is to disable the touch pad on the BIOS, I went ahead and updated to 211 from 209 but most of the functions on 211 have been blocked, including the touch pad... And for some reason I can not do Fn+F9 that aint working either.

Can I go back to 209?
I read on another thread that some other ppl are having the same issue but this definitely is related to this one.

 

I still have the same options on the 211 bios...
But you can flash back to the 209 if you want, check the other thread where you asked this.

 

Chastity i think you were right about there being different touchpads, since under touchpad boards for G73JH on Asus parts there are 2 different models listed:
1) 60-NY8TP1100-C02 Touchpad Board AS without FP R2.1 EN-0101152
2) 04G110104200 Touchpad for M90 SYNAPTICS TM-01254-001

Its possible that just one of these is somehow incompatible with the drivers/keyboard/ATK...

 

Question is, how can one tell which one has without opening her up?

 

Device IDs in device manager (provided theyre the same as those i listed)? I cant reboot and enable the touchpad right now to check (have loads of work open), but perhaps you can look at it?

 

My hardware ID for the touchpas is: ACPI/SYN0A06

which seem to be synaptic.

 

How do I find the device ID in Device Manager? I have the MS driver installed instead of Synaptics so I can finish up my new lockout software this evening. I looked at the mouse device but it just has a driver listed and the IRQ on the resource tab. I would love to look and report back.

Never mind... I figured it out. You go to the "Details tab of the device and the Property at the top is actually a list. You pull it down and you can pick different things.

Mine also says SYN0A06 like Nekki's. I can't find any descriptor that matches either of the things HellCry listed.

 

OK. I spent a few hours writing my own touchfreeze. The reason I did that was because the original touchfreeze doesn't discard mouse scroll events while you are typing. I could type just fine and touchfreeze prevented the heels of my hands from accidentally clicking in the middle of a paragraph somewhere so I was typing in the wrong place. However, the web page was still scrolling wildly while I was typing because my right hand was resting on the edge of the touchpad in my natural typing position so I was inadvertently scrolling the page I was typing on.

I got tired of messing with my own software written from scratch. I kept adding features and it kept getting bigger and bigger and I don't have enough time to finish it right now.

Whew. I'm pretty long winded, I know.

The TouchFreeze author was awesome enough to post the C++ code source for his project on google. I modified his DLL to discard wheel events in addition to the click events he was already taking care of. I don't have his permission. He hasn't updated his project since 2006 so I took matters into my own hands. You just need to replace his DLL with my updated one if you want this functionality too.

1. Download my DLL.
2. Install his TouchFreeze Application.
3. Replace his TouchFreeze.dll with my TouchFreeze.dll
4. Close the touchfreeze app if it is running.
5. Start up the touchfreeze app.

It discards mouse clicks AND mouse wheel events if you are typing on the keyboard. It's like a poor man's palm check for those of us that can't run the current Synaptic driver.

I'm at work so I can't check the link to my DLL. My website is blocked from our proxy server so please let me know if the link to my DLL doesn't work since I can't check it.

NOTE: If you are already using TouchFreeze, just replace his DLL with my DLL and it will stop scrolling while you are typing.

 

ACPI\SYN0A06

Still no keyboard lag for me though.

 

Actually, device manager won't see the touchpad itself. It only sees the Intel chipset that provides the PS/2 port. You can see this via the "parent" property.

If you don't install the Synaptics, you will get the device info about the stock Win7 mouse driver.

And I should clarify, it "sees" the mouse connected to the port, but there is nothing like a set of smart device info that would come from the touchpad itself.

 

Device manager sees the Hardware Device IDs of all devices connected to various buses. At least, buses that are PNP compliant. That includes the PS/2 bus. That's how Windows knows to load a keyboard driver instead of a mouse driver for instance.

The driver developer can't hook the mouse hardware input if the device ID is just "Intel PS/2 Chipset". You don't hook them through the device enumerator in a PNP aware OS.

This is from Microsoft:

The hardware ID of the touchpad is still going to be SYN0A06 whether you use Synaptic or MS drivers. The keyboard hardware ID is PNP0303 and it's connected to the PS/2 bus with the Intel chipset just like the touch pad.

The driver developer can create a virtual device in the driver that presents a different Hardware ID, but windows still sees the original in addition to the new ID.

 

Good work Jody, im sure some people will appreciate this until, hopefully Asus releases a proper solution.

And it seams the hardware ID were getting isnt going to lead us anywhere... I wonder if a model number is written somewhere on the touchpad, but i dont feel like tearing mine apart.

 

Thanks.

I don't want to open mine up for that either. I wish they would send me a new touchpad because I would love to replace mine over a weekend and see if that helps. I'm sure they wouldn't do that, though.

The modified TouchFreeze will get me by until Gary has a fix for us.

 

The modified TouchFreeze would work wonders for me if I could disable the touchpad using some kinda key combination like I can when I have the Synaptics drivers installed.

 

I looked into that. I am not sure how to hook that Fn+F9 key. I don't know if ATK is getting it first and throwing it away before I can see it or if it doesn't generate normal keyboard input. Also, the ATK package remotely disables the Synaptic driver. Synaptics provides an outward facing interface for doing that. The built-in driver doesn't offer a handy way to disable it like that. I'm sure it can be done because it's just software and you can do almost anything with software. I don't know how to access the driver remotely and turn it off but I didn't try very hard. This was just a quick and easy way to get the thing usable for me.

I could throw away all mouse input after you press a key combo, but I don't think you want that. You want to just turn off the touchpad. That would require remotely disabling the MS Driver for that interface somehow. I will ponder this and bang on google to see if there is an easy way to add that to TouchFreeze.

 

I'll look for a model number whenever I get around to repasting.

 

I dunno why just disabling all input from the pad wouldnt be the same thing basicly. Sure it probably resets when you reboot but thats not as big a deal. Really I just wish for at least an update from Gary.

 

|MG| PS2Rate Plus Download

Here's a small app to adjust PS/2 polling rates.

Bon Appetit

PS- Install with Full Admin rights

EDIT: nvm it doesn't like win7

 

I already test my poll rates and they are around 80 hz for the touchpad and 120 hz for the mouse. When the touchpad freezes, the rate freezes too and when the functionality return, the touchpad poll rate return to 80 hz. The point is, to touchpad stops reading the inputs and do not change the sensibility, is like working or not, but no middle points in this case.

Also, I read elsewhere to change the poll rate may led to system instability since it also change the frequency of internal chips read the peripherals, leading to asynchronous components' communications.

 

The polling rate for the trackpad is located in...
"HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Enum\ACPI\SYN0A06\4&142dd991&0\Device Parameters" on my system. The default rate is 100Hz with the MS driver installed. It was previously stated that it is 80Hz with Synaptic driver installed. Perhaps it is being polled too slowly? Perhaps windows has the ACPI interface set for 100Hz, but Synaptic driver is trying to poll slower and the syncronization is hosed?

The key shows up in my registry under CurrentControlSet, CurrentControlSet001, and CurrentControlSet002.

I intend to see if this can be tweaked and fixed. I'm at work right now and I'll have to reinstall a synaptics driver, enable it in bios, reboot, fiddle... reboot... wonder if I changed anything correctly... reboot. You know the drill.

 

The MS driver is set to poll at 100Hz and it works perfectly. This could be the whole reason it's not working right. I wonder if we can force the Synaptics driver to poll at 100Hz.

 

The MS driver doesn't work perfectly for everyone, however (at least when it comes to the keylag issue).

 

Works for me (at least i think it does, but i admit the functionality of the MS driver is so bad that i just didnt test it so much, but rather went to disabling the touchpad in Bios).

 

Same for me, It worked for me but provided such crappy functionality I went back to disabling in BIOS for the time being.

 

Me too. With touchfreeze it isn't wretched, but it's still pretty bad. No missed keystrokes, though.

I messed with the SampleRate key for SYN0A06. It doesn't change a thing. I think that when a laptop has a Synapics pad in it, there is a BIOS setting that defines the polling rate. If this is true, the polling rate isn't the problem since the MS driver works fine and the hardware polling rate would be identical. All supposition, of course.

 

But a supposition I would be highly interested to hear an Asus rep's opinion on. So does that mean Microsoft's driver polls at 100hz on all laptop touchpads? Or just Synaptics? Forgive my ignorance, but my curiosity overwhelms me.

 

Gary hasnt posted any update for a while now (i dont consider "were working on it" or "its our top priority" an update)... not to mention he promised a solution would be released some time ago.
And hes still not answering my emails... im getting a bit annoyed.
I wish he could be a bit more honest with us and answer what they are doing, how far they are and id really like to know what was changed in the new vBios, but seeing how they work, well never get any straight answers.

 

I'm not condoning Asus. I think regardless of brand companies should have properly working products.

But those who may think Asus is particular bad because of this, do me a favor. Take a chill pill and realize every brand and every laptop has it's issue.

Google: MacBook Pro Trackpad/Keyboard not working. You'll find some threads about 300 pages long. And these guys have it worse, it's not just lag. Keyboard/mouse simply not working.

I know this because my roommate has a brand new 2010 13" MacBook pro and his keyboard and mouse stopped working. It is only a few weeks old. He can't even run a restore off DVD because his F*ing mouse/keyboard doesn't work. And yes, we even tried USB, and even the externals don't work. Only a week ago, after the 2nd day using, his monitor stopped functioning requiring a motherboard and screen replacement. And he paid, you guessed it... $1,700.

You may have issues with your G73, but nothing like my roommate is having with his MacBook. Crap doesn't even work...

 

I don't think the polling rates in the Windows registry are used by the MS Driver or the Synaptics driver. That "mousrate checker" program yields about 80Hz on my system with either driver installed. My external mouse has a much higher rate, but my understanding is that all USB mice have higher rates. For some mice on older desktops at least, the polling rate is controlled through software. On laptops with Synaptics touchpads it is controlled through hardware and other laptops have recieved touchpad behavior improvements by the release of an updated BIOS that increases the tp rate from 40Hz to 80Hz. Ours is already at 80Hz and ours is affecting the keyboard more than anything else. To complicate the issue further, something like half the laptops don't even have keyboard lag running the same BIOS with the same drivers and TP hardware.

 

Just checked my device ID and it is a synaptic touchpad - SYN0A6. I also just did a clean install of Windows 7 with only the keyboard filter and latest ATK drivers. I did the install with the touchpad disabled in the bios and have just enabled it to test the keyboard issue. I think I need to install touchfreeze though because the biggest problem is the palm of my hand hitting the touchpad while I type.

 

The Synaptic drivers have a tab for adjusting the palmrest sensitivity. Settings...Pointing...Sensitivity...PalmCheck