XPS 13 9530 / XPS 15 9550 Replace Windows PTP Precision Touchpad (PTP) driver with Synaptics driver

In Firefox URL bar, type: about:config + enter

 

Curious to try this as I have scrolling problems in some older programs that Windows updates haven't resolved. I assume it's easy to roll back the driver to Windows if there's a problem? Can I just uninstall the Synaptics and let Windows find the right driver?

 

Is there anything better than Synaptics we can use? The default one on the XPS is absolute garbage with that stupid initial delay, and the synaptics has my mouse doing this weird jump back and forth as I use two finger scroll. This is just silly, my 2012 HP laptop touchpad does a better job than this ones.

 

My main problem is that the touchpad is ignoring clicks sometimes, even when I hear the touchpad click. Also, it sometimes ignores or slows down the movement when I have 1 finger pressing and holding the touchpad, and another moving (when moving a file for example). Not sure if it's a driver problem anymore, because it happens with both drivers, I think. Will re-check to make sure.

 

You may want to try this, following same steps as in the tutorial:

http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/Drivers/DriversDetails?driverId=756GC

It's a synaptic touchpad driver for Alienware, tried just for a while on my xps 13 9350 and seems there's no microlag and win10 gestures are working.

 

just tried it, it installed it as "dell touchpad driver" restarted PC came up with dell touchpad settings but it was god awful, no clicks were registering, amazing how it works fine for you but was horrible here

 

Not sure how it works for you, but on the 9550 it does not work. Thanks for the suggestion though.

 

It's working pretty good, best driver I tried since I got my xps. Scrolling seems better than default synaptic driver, but not as smooth as win10 driver. But I got win10 gestures (i love 3 fing swipe up) and there's more in the settings to try. Only thing that annoys me: left click by clicking works only in the bottom left of the touchpad, while left click by touching works on the whole surface. I guess I can change it, but haven't found yet where.

edit: this is the kind of settings I have now

 

I just test my brand new Dell XPS 13, which I bought for a whooping 1.600 Euro.

The Trackpad is driving me insane (scrolling, non repsones, etc.). The usability is the worst trackpad I ever had on any notebook in the last 10 years!
I cannot believe Dell ships such a crappy thing in their supposed premium line. The reviews I read about the Skylake said the trackpad was fixed from the predecessor. This is definitely not true.

I feel stupid going through all of those "fixes" (Symantec driver, etc.) on a brand new notebook. This thing will be shipped back.

 

I was gonna return mine too but that last windows update pretty much fixed 80% of it.... There's still an occasional hiccup when trying to move the cursor short distances but hopefully the next update will take care of that

 

Did you install just the "offical updates" from Windows via Windows Updates?
Or did you install any pre-release "Insider Preview Builds"?

 

Just did official windows update. Put check on enhanced mouse precision whatever it's called...took off pinch to zoom and put delay on low in the TouchPad settingd

 

I did the windows updates and the checkboxes etc.
Scrolling is now better.

The "lag" when going short distances with the pointer is still there. With regular web browsing I need this every 2 minutes or so... and It really gets on my nerves...
What a crappy experience.

 

The downward scrolling for the Synaptics drivers is really bad. What settings is everyone using with it? Also, has anyone tried rolling back to the PTP drivers? How would you go about doing that?

 

I did the installation of the 19_0_19 driver following the tutorial. It works great!! but...

...I have a problem that nobody else has listed here still. When I have one finger over the mousepad, sometimes randomly it registers left-clicks or right-clicks. At the beginning I thought it was my fault, maybe the way I touched it... so I disabled the option "tap to click", this way I have to click in the left or right corner.

Nevertheless occasionally when I'm just moving the arrow the mousepad still registers occasional left or right clicks. Which is very annoying.

Does anybody have this problem?

 

I found this on reddit and it has helped me a fair amount with my trackpad hatred:

Windows button > PC Settings > PC and Devices > Mouse and touchpad

From here, you get lots of options. I've turned the mouse delay to "No delay (always on)"

In the regular control panel, I've bumped up the pointer speed

 

In this thread people likely tried to turn on no delay and still experienced delay (like me). It's super small but the delay is still there.

 

I've seen that at least another one has this problem, but nobody says how to solve it:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/posts/10084124/like

On the other hand, I would like to undo the installation and go back to the windows 10 PTP driver, in order to check some other tricks explained in this forum:

http://www.heatware.net/hardware/dell-xps-13-9343-touchpadtrackpad-lag-issue/

The problem is that I cannot go back to the previous state via restoration point because (I don't know why) the system only has saved the last 4 restoration points, and none of them is the state previous to the unistallation of the PTP driver. Is there a way to return to that state?

 

In theory at least, you should be able to go to the Device Manager, Uninstall the Mouse and delete the drivers and then via the update driver option get the latest version from MS.

I'd recommend having an external mouse at hand for that though.

 

Is there any way to change the two finger tap to a middle mouse button input? I had to do it via some registry hacks on my old Samsung Series 7 Ultrabook, but here even that doesn't seem to be possible..

 

does anyone have a solution to the not registering small movements issue? i tried using synaptics, but i find that to be a lot worse.

 

Hi, is there any way to drag three fingers up and get to the multitasking screen immediately?

 

I haven't tried this yet but I have heard that it works.

http://www.multiswipe.com/

 

Finally took the plunge and installed the Synaptics drivers the other day, and I have to say, the improvement is dramatic. The jump/bounce issue when two-fingered scrolling is now gone. I also love that two finger swipes now navigate forward and backward. Dell really needs to switch from the crappy PTP drivers to Synaptics.

One oddity I've noticed. Sometimes, when I first load a new web page in Chrome, it scrolls more slowly than normal. Two-finger scrolling still works but seems slightly less responsive to the movement of my fingers. However, if I switch briefly to another tab then back, the new page scrolls correctly. Anyone else notice this?

 

What do you mean with the jump/bounce issue?
I dont have the driver replaced till now, in most situations the trackpad works really good, except of the gallery in adobe lightroom, there i have something like a "boouncing/jumping" thing when i want to scroll it just moves the whole window a bit, but everywhere else it works fine so far, so i am not sure if i should replace the driver

 

Every once in a while, when two-finger scrolling, the screen will randomly jump forward or backward several lines. Pretty much every program I've used is affected. It's a very common problem among XPS 13 owners. Not sure about XPS 15.

If you aren't experiencing that problem, and are otherwise happy with your trackpad performance, I probably wouldn't bother. The Synaptics driver brings improvements but also some issues of its own, so I wouldn't do it just to do it.

 

Just got my Precision 5510 (e3, 4k).

Tried installing the I2C Synaptics drivers but that just replaced the I2C device with a synaptics device in the HID section. Rebooted. Resulted in no more touch lag, and obviously no gestures, 2-finger scrolling, etc. Just move the pointer, and left/right click via the touchpad buttons.

Installed Synaptics 19.0.19.1 PS2/SMBus Drivers for Win 10 on the PS/2 compatible mouse under the device input section. Rebooted. Resulted in a synaptics control pane tab in my mouse advanced options window.

Synaptics features include:

1. Click
   • Tap and drag
   • Two finger click = right menu
   • Three finger click = option from dropdown menu of just about any action you'd desire.
2. Scroll
   • Scrolling Speed
   • Inertia for continued scrolling
   • Two finger scrolling - Vertical/Horizontal
   • One finger edge scrolling - Vertical/Horizontal (I LOVE THIS!)
   • Change size of area one finger edge scroll works.
3. Gestures
   • Two Fingers
     • Pinch to zoom
     • Rotate
   • Three Fingers
     • Horizontal & Vertical Swipe
4. Advanced
   • Smartsense
   • Motion - How sensitive is the touchpad to pressure.
   • Edge Motion - continue to move the mouse if your dragging and/or scrolling if you reach the edge of the touchpad a don't release.
   • Accessibility - Slow down and/or restrict pointer movement to up/down and left/right only. Cool feature for graphics editing I'd iagine.

I gotta say, I'm in love with this laptop now. I was a little discouraged when I got it and noticed the movement delay.O But this has made me smile again.

Ine downside as others have pointed out, scrolling in chrome is jumpy. I gave the SmoothScroll extension a try, but I haven't been able to find a setting set that actually works. I might end up usng edge until something is resolved on Chrome's end.

I did notice there are Synaptics drivers versioned 19.0.27.3, but haven't gone through the motions to test if they improve scrolling in Chrome.

 

Will you be able to map three fingers swipe to browser back and forward? If so, I am sold.

 

That's exactly what it maps to by default.

 

Great! I'll give it a try now!

 

I found the small movements is related to cursor speed. The greater the speed the harder for the touchpad to register small movements. It makes sense as to increase the speed, they just scale the sensed movement thus lose the small movements capability. I believe every issues we have are related to the resolution of the touch pad. Macbook touchpads must have the highest resolution.

 

I revert back to Microsoft driver. I tried to love Synaptics driver. It has more features but the consistency is lacking. The most severe problem to me is the two fingers scrolling. Sometimes it won't scroll instead move the cursor to a very far end. Very annoying. I love the forward and backward three finger swipes, but I miss the three fingers swipe up and down that allow me to switch between tasks.

 

The thing is, in the BIOS and Diagnostics screens, small gestures work perfectly fine and at fast speed. It's definitely not a hardware issue.

 

No, in BIOS the resolution is much lower. You can lower your screen resolution and will find it works just like when it is in BIOS.

 

If you activate the accessory slow motion option in Synaptics, you will then be able to make small motions easily

 

That's not what I'm seeing on my FHD. Regardless of screen resolution, there's still the brief delay before small/slow gestures register in Windows, but on other screens its instantaneous.

 

what do you mean you are not seeing on yout FHD? If you are talking about BIOS screen, the screen is low resolution that scaled to fill the whole real estate. The delay is a feature of Windows plus processing time.

 

So you agree that this is incorrect: "You can lower your screen resolution and will find it works just like when it is in BIOS."

 

Ok, you are right. I wrote something careless. My intention is to help not to argue. I just tried 800x600 and "to me" it works like in BIOS. "To me", the delay is almost negligible.

 

It's an issue with the HID Touch Pad Device drivers. When I2C is enabled and the HID Touch Pad intercepts all the track pad movements, its designed to wait to see what gesture you're doing before it starts moving the mouse. Also you're stuck using the windows gestures when routing through the I2C drivers even when using the Synaptics I2C drivers.

One thing I noticed, is I2C driver gestures work inside vmware which is a nice improvement finally. But I can't stand the delay so settling with the PS/2 synaptics drivers/gesture software, and using an injected library hook to make them work inside vmware. This way I get the full gesture capabilities inside the virtual machine and no delay. I sped up the movement speed in the registry to account for the 4k display since it wasn't designed for such a large display and it seems acceptable to me.

 

I have found the Synaptic touchpad to be excellent, in terms of customization and fluidity for the most part. But one glaring flaw, at least for me, is that with Synaptics the cursor produces a jerky movement when moving small distances and releasing my finger from the touchpad. The jerking movement is similar to the "rubber-band" scrolling movement with the PTP driver, in which the cursor rubber-bands itself while moving a small (roughly 0.1cm to 2 cm on my screen) distance. This is especially annoying when I'm trying to click a button or link. This can be fixed by disabling the tap-to-touch function, but I'd rather have that over the customization that Synaptic offers. In addition, disabling tap to touch causes the cursor to move a few pixels when it is clicked,
(P.S. in my case, the jerky rubber-band scrolling motion with PTP drivers can be avoided by using middle and ring finger to scroll. I noticed that using my index+middle fingers to scroll caused the unsmooth scrolling).

I played with the registry and Synaptics settings to no avail. This has been mentioned in the thread a few times, but with no solution, so I was wondering if anyone has found a workaround to it 2 months later. In the meantime, I will move back to the original PTP drivers until Synaptic comes out with new firmware which hopefully addresses the issue.

I found a thread where the issue seems to be resolved, but it is based on ubuntu and not windows, so I can't find the "FingerHigh" or "FingerLow" options.
http://askubuntu.com/questions/1278...-around-when-just-tapped-after-ubuntu-12-04-u

Edit: Forgot to mention that "slow motion" feature as suggested by a previous poster did not solve the issue. My cursor "rubber-bands" at normal speed with the feature enabled.
List of what I tried (no success):
1/ Enabling or disabling precision mouse movement / Changing "default" cursor speed to medium
2/ Enable/disable Pinch to zoom
3/ Enable/disable touch zones
4/ Enable/disable cursor momentum
5/ Changing cursor speed to slow or fast with Synaptics settings, then registry settings
I tried others too, but don't remember since I've uninstalled Synaptics.

Edit #2: This website has a gif that has the same exact problem: http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebo...ynaptics-Touchpad-snapping-issue/td-p/5395476

But there was no solution to this either.

 

Has anyone tried the "TwofingerScroll"-Driver on the XPS 13?
http://www.chip.de/downloads/TwoFingerScroll_42019070.html

 

Does this driver allow you to change the sensitivity of the touchpad itself? I feel like its way too sensitive to minor touches and picks up dust falling on it!

 

Hi
I installed the synaptics driver hoping to change the zones of the touchpad so they didn't extend over the buttons. I couldn't get it to work, and I actually like this driver less than the original. How do I restore the original PTP precision driver that came installed on the laptop? Thanks

 

I was able to undo this set-up like this:

1. Uninstall the Synaptics driver via Settings > System > Apps and features.
2. Open Device Manager.
3. Under "Human Interface Devices" find "I2C HID Device" and re-enable it.
   1. If you don't see "I2C HID Device" in the list, you might need to follow a tutorial like this to show hidden devices: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/77614-device-manager-hidden-devices.html?ltr=D

 

OK I just got this XPS15 and now I find out this tiny company Dell does not have the technical resources to implement a small program to allow the owners to configure the touchpad? Am I messing something or is this a dream?

 

It's not about resources, they've chosen to use the Windows PTP driver. You'll find all available settings under Settings -> Devices -> "Mouse & touchpad".

 

Thank you for the details.

I think it was all about cost So I have been using windows (and Linux) for 20+ years. Stupid me, I was looking in the Control Panel. Looks like Microsoft in their infinite wisdom decided to hide settings all over the place to I guess make it somehow more convenient? With help of google I found these 'other' settings options and was able to make the touchpad a bit more usable.

On the side note looks like Microsoft decided that it is acceptable to start downloading and updating my computer without checking with me first. I was a bit puzzled at first why my computer started crawling and then refused to run software installations and then reboot on me. I guess they know better... oh well quick nuke of the Windows Update service hopefully will take care of that virus I think I should be capable to decide what and when I want to update and not in the middle of my work.

Now I have to figure out why Dells driver verification on their support website fails to work. I really do not want to manually check every driver for updates every time.

Other than all this the computer looks very nice. It is a bit heavy and thick but I knew it will be based on the specifications.

 

Yea, it's a bit weird how they made the new settings app and the control panel coexist.

Regarding the drivers, you can check for new drivers with the application "Dell Update" on your PC. I only use the website if I want to download a specific driver. But we are going a bit off-topic here

 

thanks, yes sorry about the off-topic