HEL80 Touchpad Scrolling Problems?

Anyone having problems with the touchpad scroll bar on their HEL80? I like having the scrollbar on the touchpad, it's one of the reasons I chose this model. But I'm having issues in all my applications except for IE. When I use the scrollpad in firefox, VS2005, or word, the cursor jumps over to the scrollbar on the right of the window, which means I have to move it back over to click on something. Sometimes it seems to get stuck there stop and scrolling. It's quite bothersome. Strangely enough, it works fine in IE6.

I’ve tried uninstalling the drivers and re-installing. No dice. Driver version is 5.0.3.6

One thing I have tried is picking the standard PS2 drivers instead of the Elantech drivers, then everything scrolls fine, but I can’t customize the other features of the touchpad, such as the 'turn off while typing' or the multifinger tap (very cool feature BTW, I have a 2-finger tap set to internet back).

Any ideas?

 

Call our 24/7 Customer Service. Look on the bottom of your laptop for the toll free phone number.

This is a valuable part of your purchase price...please take advantage of it

 

Oh I have, your tech support is looking into it for me.

I just thought I'd check with a larger user base.

 

Darn. I was hoping that this touchpad/driver combo was new enough not to have the problem.

I assume it's the same as the isse people all over the net have reported.

One link from these forums purports to have found a solution. If you get a chance to try the drivers, please comment on a) do they work and b) do you lose any other features and c) does the touchpad work well (any erratic behavior)?

[Edit: It seems that the drivers out there (on the Anadem site, anyway) for the touchpad in the EL80 are version 5.0.3.6, whcih is quite a bit newer than the one mentioned in the linked post.]

 

The same thing happens on my HEL80 (review unit). Sounds like a software issue. The scroll bar works in every application so far. Does jump to the right though.

 

The scrollbar works for me in every application without switching to the right.

Seems like you guys have to switch to Linux for it to work though

 

NOOOOO I WAS HOPING THERE WOULD BE NO PROBLEMS WITH THE HEL80.
This is horrible news to hear!
I hope there is a simple fix for this, if you find out please let us know.

 

Use another mouse.
Although that doesn't fix the issue, that completely avoids it

 

I really don't view it as a problem for this series. The mouse moving to the right when you use the scroll bar is a small inconvenience in my opinion, nothing more, and certainly nothing to judge a notebook like the HEL80 on. It should be able to be fixed via a software or driver update if one comes out.

 

I tried the older drivers, no go. Erratic behaviour followed by the dreaded BSD.

And to aznron911, it's not a huge deal. These machines are pretty new, it'll probably take an iteration or two of drivers to get things perfect on every OS. It's a driver issue, no question, a simple exe downloaded and executed once.

 

Except, of course, for those odd cass where you want to use your laptop in some bizarre way like, oh I don't know ...


As a laptop?!


It sucks, but I do grudgingly agree with Chaz that it's not a killing blow against as fine a laptop as the HEL80. Wish Compal would have gone with a touchpad that isn't crap (Synaptics, anyone?), but what are ya gonna do? Nothing in this world is perfect.

 

What a ridiculous concept.

 

Could not scroll in Opera 8.54 so i uninstalled the drivers and am just using the Microsoft ones. can scroll now but do not have any tap and drag functionality. I agree that the drivers should have been better programmed than they are but I still like the rest of the features on the hEL80.

Gary

 

Yet another thread on this topic is here.

In it, someone claims that the Synaptics driver works with the Elantech touchpad. (Note that I cannot verify this, as I don't have my HEL80 yet. )

 

Just finished installing the syntaptic drivers. I didn’t see a place for the multiple finger taps in their control app, which is one of the coolest features (IMO) after the scrolling, so it’s back to the PS2 drivers for me until Elantech releases the next version of their drivers. Keep us posted here if you find them eh?

 

After updating windows, firefox and doing some stuff here doing some stuff there (I don't really know what I did), my scrolling in Firefox works fine (except when writing in this textbox). I have not tested other applications.

edit: works perfectly in IE.

 

I've not got this problem with the mouse jumping. For you guys using the driver off the CD from powernotebooks, have you tried making sure that the autosnap feature is unchecked? That is the only thing I can think of that would cause that behavior.

 

So weird. I tried the Synaptics generic drivers, but they suck since you can't adjust any of the settings. So I reinstalled the Elantech drivers, but now I have a lot more Elantech-tabs in the mouse settings screen which I didn't have before. Very weird!

 

That's weird yes! Which tabs do you have? Currently I have (only listing Elantech):
Buttons, Touchpad, Scrolling, Others, Quick Setup, Pointer Option

 

I can't say, I removed the Synaptics touchpad drivers since they didn't work well and the tabs were gone after the reboot. I remember have some kind of corner tapping tab. You could set each corner of the touchpad to perform a specific action, like going back and forward in your internet browser, opening the start menu, etc. It didn't work though, but it was definitely an Elantech tab.

 

The scrolling works fine in the windows PS2 drivers, but you don't get to customize any of the other features. Kjetil, you're probably running the standard windows driver I'll bet if you install the Elantech drivers scrolling will be a problem again.

 

Just received my HEL80 yesterday and in the limited time I have used it so far, I love it. Have encountered the problem with the scroll bar causing the pointer to jump to the right, and before I contact Powernotebooks Support, I thought I would check here to see if anyone has found a fix.

Thanks

 

Nope. Using elantech...anyways, sometimes I have the problem, sometimes not...

 

I have the same problem, especially in Firefox. It looks like they don't implement a real wheel scrolling, but they use some kind of dirty trick like jumping to the scroll bar and emulating a lot of "down/up arrows". Not exactly like that, but it has the same efect in many cases.

I installed the drivers from the bizcom page on top of the ones I had installed (which were from the CD)... actually I think they are the same. Anyway, after doing this secnd install, the mouse configuration window had many more options, like options for scroll buttons (that this touchpad doesn't have), and options for corner tapping, etc. For a moment I was happy to see that now scrolling worked like it's supposed to do! But then I saw that the other "features" did not work (drag locking, corner tapping, pointer precision). So it was actually the same as having the regular Windows drivers. Double and triple-tapping, and normal scrolling are built-in into the BIOS or something because they work even with the regular Windows drivers and in Linux as well, withtout doing anything special. However, when installing the Elantech drivers, they mess up with the scrolling.. I don't know why.

I went back to the normal Elantech behaviour because I prefer to have the other options like drag locking and I use an external mouse most of the time.

 

I wasn't able to scroll in Opera, but a friend ended up helping me by installed the generic synaptics driver. Interestingly enough, it works great now. It seems the synaptics driver added another tab to the elantech driver window (for the settings, etc). I still have the multi finger features as well.

 

I'll try the synaptics approach... just install it on top of the elantech without uninstalling them?

As I said... the multiple-finger taps are probably lower level (BIOS, or even the touchpad firmware itself) since they work with regular windows/linux drivers.

 

I'm having this problem too, but just in Firefox and it was random for a while, but now seems frequent

 

Well I just tried updating my Elantech drivers to 5.0.3.8.

Still have the scrolling issue. If they could fix that, and give me a disable touchpad option (make it a rightclick in the systray icon while your at it) I'd be set.

 

i installed the synaptic driver over the elantech driver and the scrolling works fine, but for some reason it seems like all the elantech driver settings no longer work. I want to use the disable while typing feature and scroll at the same time, but so far everything i did just didnt work.

 

That's because the syntaptics driver doesn't work, so windows defaults to the standard windows driver, that works, but doesn't support cool features, like multiple finger tap, disable while typing etc. The touchpad automatically registers 2 finger taps as middle click, and 3 finger taps as right clickThe elantech (KTP.exe) is still running, but having no effect on the software.

You can actually choose the windows driver with the elantech software installed, and get the same result as installing the syntaptics driver.

This is the most annoying thing about the laptop for me so far. I wish Elantech would get us a fixed driver set. Compal could help by pushing them I suppose.

EDIT: There's a saying "You can wish in one hand, and *&^ in the other, see which fills up first." I decided to work on a solution instead of waiting for one. I've been running the PS2 windows driver, so I can scroll. One of the features I really wanted was to 2finger tap as internet back in firefox. I downloaded a gestures addon at http://easygestures.mozdev.org/, and it's suiting my needs nicely. I may not have disable while typing, but this is much better than where I was at. Thought I'd share a solution instead of just b!tching all the time. Enjoy!

 

Hi,

I was hopping there is a solution to this scrolling problem using the touchpad's scroll bar with Firefox. I have already tried to update drivers without sucess.

If I check "Disable while typing" it just won't work fine. If I don't check it, I simply can't type long texts because it keeps jumping to arrows position.

Since there isn't a clear info about a solution I am asking here.

Thanks!

 

I have a similar problem, the disable when typing feature just doesn't work. Type goes everywhere. I had a microsoft notebook usb mouse installed with intellipoint software (ver 6.1)after I uninstalled the intellipoint software the disable function worked. I am currently running windows xp, with elantech driver 5038. there are newer drivers 5013/5 but they are designated for vista, don't know if they would work with XP or further screw up things. Oh yes scrolling with firefox is still an issue with 5038 drivers. The scrolling feature works fine when I have intellipoint installed, but then disable when typing doesn't It is more important to me to be able to type than to use all the featurtes of my notebook mouse. but I wish they played nice together.

 

we should all email elantech to fix the problems with their drivers

 

With so many users having this issues I thought someone had already done that!

 

they claim I was the only one to email them!

 

What email address did you email to? I figured when looking at their site that they didn't understand english, so didn't bother. But I'll surely fire up an email. I also figured the resellers would have emailed them.

 

try this http://www.elantech.com.tw/003/contact.aspx
you will get a form and they will contact you

 

I sent the message above. Let's see what they will say about it.

 

Fired off an email to Elantech. Please, those of you owning a compal! Send them an email! Here is the contents of my mail:

 

Received a reply from Elantech tonight:

Hopefully they make some headway on the problem.

 

I received a reply today suggesting that I use the 50313 driver

 

I received the same answer, but this version didn't fixed the problem. I reinstalled it twice and keeps working just like the older one.

 

Got a reply yesterday for my email as well:

I installed the driver they provided... but it did not fix the problem, and as well for some reason explorer.exe now constantly uses 50% of my CPU. If anyone else can confirm whether this happens to your system as well, or if it is just my setup, I would REALLY appreciate it

I sent a return E-mail:

 

I just instaled the driver and the same thing happened, with the addition that explorer writes continuously to my hard drive and filled it up!, trashed the drivers and everything works as it did. If I put the microsoft mouse drivers on the system they overwrite the elantech and I am then unable to disable the touchpad when typing. In device manager the device changes from ekantech to ps2 mouse. there is only one listed not two separate devices.
Do not use the 50313 drivers!

 

Tell Elantech of your problem! the more e-mails, the more chance that they will fix the problem(s).

 

Well, it has been almost a month since my last e-mail to Elantech and I still haven't got an answer. So I sent them another e-mail, short and direct:

Have anyone found a solution?

 

Yet any answer from Elantech. Like Lt.Glare said, we should "Tell Elantech of your problem! the more e-mails, the more chance that they will fix the problem(s).".

So, anyone who has this problem send them a message!

 

i am having the same problem and it is extremely annoying. i just emailed elantech asking for a solution. i didnt notice this issue with older drivers, but i updated mine recently when i reinstalled windows and have had the problem ever since. are there older drivers anywhere that will work?

 

porkster, don't you have the original driver's CD that came with your notebook? Check it out and look for witch version you were using!

 

Hi guys, it is clear that our problem don't make a difference for Elantech. But I've some news about it!

Recently I bought a Microsoft Wireless (Bluetooth) Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000 and it came Microsoft IntelliPoint 6.02 software. Looking for a better compatibility with my built-in bluetooth I installed this software. Then I realized it integrated itself into mouse proprieties. No big deal, but the news is that it CORRECTS the touchpad scrolling problem when using Firefox and others applications!

The bad news is the "moving arrow when the typing" issues slightly came back because somehow the function "Disable when tapping" apparently was affected and isn't working fully good.