Touchpad Problems on X230

I have the plain X230 (no touchscreen, not a tablet). I think the sub-version is 2306 CTO. I installed a 256GB SSD in the PCIe slot shortly after buying it, and did a clean install of Windows 8 Pro X64 onto it, on which I have done all the updates, up tp date. (I still have the 500GB HDD, used for storage, although I removed the OS from it. The system boots to the SSD.

Of course after the clean install I installed all the necessary drivers, and have kept them up to date. For the touchpad and trackpad (is that what the pointing stick is callled?), I had installed the newest Synaptics-Lenovo drivers from the Lenovo X230 update page, for Win8 X64.

I have had problems with the touchpad from the start. (I guess I am not the only one, as I have seen many posts about X230 touchpad problems.) In Mouse settings in Control Panel, I disabled most of the special features of the touchpad (like tapping, momentum, etc.) to try to make it function more normally.

I am not used to using a pointing stick, although occasionally I use it for something, when the touchpad is acting up. Also, I often use an external mouse. (Not always practical though--for instance, when working on one's lap, with no table availalble.)

There are no real mouse buttons on the X230 touchpad. The bottom part of the touchpad will click, however. There is no clear demarcation between left and right mouse buttons. In fact, clicking most of the bottom of the touchpad seems to function as the right mouse button. One has to click all the way to the left to function as a left mouse button. That is a pain to me, as one left-clicks much more than right-clicks. Yet, when I intend to left-click, it often right-clicks instead, I have to esc out of that, and click again, making sure I am totally over to the left edge.

I don't see anything in the settings to adjust that behavior I just mentioned, of where to click for right and left. It seems to be in the hardware itself. Do they all function like that? Or might I have got a defective touchpad, which I should ask to be replaced under warranty?

Actually, for that clicking problem, I experimented with something in settings. I enabled tapping, and used the defaults of a one finger tap (on the regular touchpad, not that bottom part that clicks) for left-click, two finger tap for right-click, and three fingers for middle-click. I did not find that to work at all, so disabled tapping again.

Lately I have been having a more serious problem. Sometimes I cannot left-click at all. I can point with the touchpad, but when I click, all the way over to the left, nothing happens. Sometimes when that happens I can click with the trackpad left button instead. But sometimes that doesn't work either. Then I might try clicking with the external mouse instead. Sometimes that works, but sometimes that does not work either! That is a very serious problem, when no pointing device will click! (And of course, that symptom is not indicative of a hardware problem, but rather a software problem!) (Which doesn't also rule out the possibility of a hardware problem in the touchpad, of course.)

I did SFC /scannow, no problems, chkdsk /f, everything like that. I uninstalled and reinstalled the Synaptics/Lenovo driver package, newest version. Still had the same problems.

Now I just uninstalled the Synaptics-Lenovo driver package, rebooted, and did not re-install it. Both the touchpad and pointing stick still seem to work, I guess with the Windows default mouse driver. (By the way, I have never installed any drivers for the external mouse,) I haven;'t tried it much yet though. (Writing this on a different computer.) (The problem still exists though, that one has to click all the way to the left edge to get a left-click. That particular problem does not seem to be driver-related, but how the hardware functions. Have others with the X230 encountered the same, or might it be a defect in my unit?)

I would like to hear how others have dealt with X230 touchpad problems, and possible problems with the driver package for it on the Lenovo web site?

Have some had your touchpad replaced under warranty? If so, were problems solved by doing so?

Have others done as I just did, and uninstalled the Synaptics-Lenovo driver, not reinstalled them, and just used the default Windows mouse driver? If so, how has that worked for you? (I have not done it long enough yet, to come to a conclusion myself.)

Also, has anyone tried, after uninstalling the touchpad driver package from the Lenovo X230 site, installing the touchpad driver from the Synaptics site? That one is newer than the one on the Lenovo site, but of course would only be for the touchpad, not for the pointing stick.. (I would guess if one did that, then the pointing stick would use the default Windows mouse driver, while the touchpad would use that Synaptics touchpad-only driver. ) If you have tried that, please report on it.

It is unfortunate that with the X230 being in general a high-end notebook (mine has the i7 processor, 16GB of RAM, the 256GB SSD as well as the 500GB 7200RPM HDD), that Lenovo apparently tried to save money on construction by including a crappy touchpad, without any real mouse buttons, etc.

Thank you in advance for your input into X230 touchpad problems.

 

They did put mouse buttons on the X201 and X201 tablet, but it lead to complaints of a postage stamp sized touch pad. It was pretty small. It's kind of a tough nut to crack because the palm rest on the X series are so small. Then you've got the track point buttons taking up touch pad space too, which leaves even less room for the touch pad.

There are some threads here concerning tweaks to improve touch pad performance. You might want to search for those via google.

 

I will point out that I uninstalled the Lenovo touchpad/trakpad driver package, and after rebooting installed the newest touchpad drivers from the Synaptics site. So far, although I have not used it a lot since, a definite improvement from doing so. (By the way, although I am not a trackpad fan, that still works too, most likely running from the default Windows mouse driver.)

Still curious to hear others experience as well.