dv2000t Touchpad Freakout

Just received my dv2000t today. Everything is running great, except the touchpad. For whatever reason, after about 15 minutes of usage the touchpad starts freaking out. It only allows me to move the cursor up and down, while the whole time it is jittering vertically across the screen.

This is my first laptop to have the vertical scroll feature on the touchpad, so I thought maybe that was what was causing the problem. After turning that feature off I have still run into the problem.

If any of you have experienced this problem or have ideas of what could be causing it, I'd appreciate your input.

Also, I'd like to reformat it and install a partition of linux on it. Will this screw me over if I need to return it because the touchpad hardware is broke?

 

Reformats will not screw you over and are covered under most, if not all, warranties. As for your touchpad issue, have you reinstalled the drivers for the touchpad? I believe you can find all those on HP's website. I would try that first to see if it fixes the problem.

 

stanvman,
I've had a similar problem with my touchpad, though not quite as extreme. For me, the touchpad is generally fine, but the cursor will jump around at times (generally vertically when my finger gets close to the point where the horizontal scrolling region begins). This is actually my second dv2000t (the first one had the lcd defect that other members have discussed), and the first one had a perfect touchpad.

So far, I haven't tried anything aside from fiddling with the various hardware settings to fix the problem (some adjustments to the palmcheck sensitivity seem to have helped a bit), but I may give reinstalling the driver a try.

 

While creating the HP PC Recovery Discs (which takes 15 CD-R's ), I've been messing around with the drivers. First I uninstalled and then reinstalled the Synaptic Touchpad drivers. Same problem cropped up. Then I tried turning the touchpad off and using a USB mouse. No problems. So THEN, I just totally uninstalled the Synaptic drivers, and let XP take care of the touchpad interfacing. So far, I've had no FREAKOUT.

So, if you're having problems with your touchpad, just try dumping the Synaptic drivers.

Hopefully, this is the end of my touchpad woes.

 

stanvman
Glad to hear you worked out the problem with your touchpad!

I've ahd my dv2000t for about a month now, traveled with it on two trips, and so far, love it!

Hope you have the same experience with your dv2k as I'm having with mine.

(yeah, the restore disks take up a LOT of space! I used 3 dvd's)

 

I dont see any issues with my dv2000t. The touchpad has been extremely smooth and is slightly different in feel than the one in the V3000 and older R3000.

 

Bad news, the touchpad is still messed up. Also, while trying to burn the recovery cd's, 80% of the time the drive failed.

It pisses me off because I got a great deal on this rig. How easy/hard is it to get a refund from HP?

 

Just register your HP care like it says on the box and call the company. Theyll send you a box to send to them and theyll fix it.

 

Stanvman, you have 21 days to return the laptop. They even pay for pickup shipping. You just have to call them and ask for a RMA number and they schedule a pickup for you.
I'm having the same problem with mine. I'm going to return it next week and I'll order another one. I'm not ready to give up on HP yet. I really like the DV2000T.

 

Hmm...I might have to take back my original statement about the touchpad. Now that I have used it more often, I definately have the same issue. It is not apparant if you have an external mouse attached, but is quite annoying when using the touchpad. It seems to jump out of control once every 3-4 minutes. It is quite random and an annoying problem.

Grr...now I am in 2 minds, should I return it(and not have a laptop for a while) or keep it and ignore the issue.

EDIT: I just tried BIOS version F09 and the issues seems to have been sloved....Anybody else willing to try and confirm this
BTW, I had BIOS version F.0B before.

EDIT 2: Nope, the issue still remains.

 

If your pad freaks outs try flexing up the plastic in front of mouse keys. It is a temporary fix for for me. I have a Compaq V3010US laptop with the same issues. It is not a driver related because I have two hard drives; one with XP Pro x64 and one with XP Home and it happens under both. I am not impressed.

Now let me explain how I got this laptop before you think about returning it.

I purchase a Compaq V2300 and after 11 months it completely dies.
I return the laptop and it comes back with a Sempron in it. (Its a Turion laptop)
HP says they are sorry 10 times so I ship it back to them to get a Turion.
The laptop comes back with a higher speed grade sempron AGAIN.
I give HP tons of hell and asked if they were scamming people on repairs hoping people will not notice the Semprons coming back.
HP wants my laptop so they can investigate and send me this V3010US. I lost out because I had to buy my 2GB over again since it's DDR2 but I figured it's a Turion X2 so I'll come out ahead in VMware. Anyhow had it for 3 days and this keypad problem is here.

This makes me sick.

 

Is this a problem on all dv2000/V3000 notebooks? or it is a just a problem with some of them?

I am thinking of buying V3000z, but after I see this, I think i need to give it a second thought.

Thanks anyone who can help me figure this out.

 

I had a V3000z before bought the dv2000t and used for about 25 days and it never experienced touchpad issues. maybe it is apparant only in newer models, but from my experience the V3000z didnt show any. The dv2000t on the other hand has this freakout every 3-4 minutes and is highly annoying and I think will be returning it.

In any case HP has a 21 day return policy,so if any issues crop up you can just return it for a full refund.

 

I think it's a single model of touchpad but who knows what laptops this crazy touchpad is in. I have used touchpads for many years and this is the first time I have seen one do this.

 

This is a little different, but before I returned my dv8000t because of keyboard issues, I also noticed that the scrolling feature on my touchpad wouldn't work at times. The cursor moved fine, but I was forced to click on the scroll bar in order to get pages to scroll down. The problem usually resolved itself after a few minutes, but it was still annoying...

 

Does this apply to the DV2040CA from Best Buy too?

To those with problems, have you ever tried going to the stores to try out the display model's touchpad?

 

I have the dv2000t and I have the same issue. I bought the laptop in June 2006 and the issue popped up in late July while driving/moving from CA to GA (definitely, and unfortunately, past the 21 day point). We were in a hotel and I was going to check my e-mail when the touhpad only allowed me to move the cursor up and down. I restarted, and it was fine for a while. Then the touchpad just froze - I was able to right-click in the last location, but movement was not functional. When I restarted, I watched the cursor and during the shutdown the cursor seemed to move erratically, as if my movements were being stored in a buffer.

I immediately called HP, and unfortunately I was treated like Joe User and first asked "What color is the light above the touchpad, next to the button?" GRRRR. **No way, the problem just happened as I was typing this story recap!** Anyway, the online tech had me uninstall and then reinstall the Synaptec drivers and then restart. While I was exclaiming that the problem was solved, the touchpad froze. Of course, the immediate reply from the tech was that I have Adware installed (which is preposterous as I have ZoneAlarm and Lavasoft AdAware and I am VERY cognizent of what I am installing on my machine! So we uninstalled the drivers and then restarted so that XP would automatically reinstall the Synaptec drivers.

The issue still happens every now and then, and it is sad that there is no fix, and even sadder that rather than solve the issue with experience the tech tried to solve the problem with an obviously scripted If/Then tree. So weak.

I have not yet connected an external mouse to my laptop, but hopefully that will not result in the same type of freeze.

On another issue, my IE homepage, when I took the machine out of the box and booted it up, without any connection to the internet whatsoever, was http://hp-laptop.aol.com. And I am unable to change it within IE settings. Actually, I can change it, but the homepage always reverts to the same. When confronted with this second issue, guess the tech's reply. Yep, I must have Adware on my machine. WRONG! Unless you call AOL Adware, which may not be a stretch. I explained that this was the case when I tried to change the homepage to anything but the default AOL page, but he did not understand. Anyone have a fix for this homepage issue?

 

The issue about not being able to change your home page is related to the latest version of Zonealarm where they enabled the IE default page protection by default. The problem is with the free version this cannot be changed since it is a paid feature. Uninstall ZA or get a older version and you should be able to change your home page.

 

Roger that. I went into ZoneAlarm and clicked "Check for Update". Wouldn't you know it the new version (6.5.731.000) states that there is a fix for a known problem where users are unable to change their homepage.

Thank you for the assitance. Now, if I can only solve the touch pad issue...

 

Ohhh...there is a fix. Thanks for letting me know. I had uninstalled when I couldnt find any other alternative fix. I will try it right now.
Thanks.

 

I forgot to mention something about the touchpad freakout. While on the phone with the tech, he asked me to look at the Device Manager for any red "X's". At the time there were none. But after having uninstalled and reinstalled drivers while on the phone, and then after ending the call, I went back to the Device Manager to look again. And there was a red "X" on "USB Composite Device".

Any idea how to fix this? It is obviously related to what we did to fix the problem over the phone.

 

It had been a few days since my touchpad freaked out, but it happened at boot-up today. I couldn't even use the pad to click on the green arrow ro log in. Anyway, I downloaded the new BIOS (F.09) and ran the .exe. I exited out of the install when I got a pop-up window asking if I wanted to replace BIOS F.0A dated 6/23/2006 with F.09 dated 6/16/2006. Why would the BIOS update from the HP web page be older than the one installed on the machine?

UPDATE: February 2007 and the issue hasn't popped up since November 2006. I have not updated my BIOS at all, but I have been installing the Windows Updates. I periodically check the HP Software Update and there is an update for the Synaptics device. However, since the problem hasn't shown up in a few months, I'd rather not play with fire here. Otherwise, this laptop is awesome. One weird thing is that after I installed the update to Rhapsody I now have "Rhapsody" and HP Rhapsody" installed on my machine. One is the new version, one is the old.

 

They told me to install the same BIOS which I did and it did not fix the issue. I have since returned the laptop. I think there were 2 BIOS for the dv2000t with the GMA 950 and the Go7200. Since they released the GMA950 first, it probably had the F09 BIOS and the Go7200 shipped with the F0 BIOS. That might explain the differences in the release dates.

 

I don't even know why manufactures still use this outdated touchpad on laptops. The clik buttons should be intergrated into the touchpad itself.

Personally I hate touchpads and pull out my wireless mouse anyway.

 

It's now Feb 08 and I have not had any problems since back in Aug 2006. The laptop has been awesome!