Samsung Series 7 Chronos NP700Z5A: Trackpad Discussion Only

KISS principle in full effect here: The F5 key on my laptop has a picture of a boxed "X" with a little hand off to the lower right. I took a guess that this was supposed to imply "turn off trackpad." I pressed the Fn key and the F5 key simultaneously, and now my trackpad is off. I pressed it again and the trackpad control came back on. I intend to keep it off, but it is nice to know that it is all right there in one simple command.

So in summary, to turn the trackpad On/Off click; Fn + F5

It took me several hours of over-thinking this, and searching all over for hidden files, before asking the questions "Why would Samsung hide this? Why wouldn't they make control of this function easily accessible?" And then of course there it was, right under my nose the whole time.

 

Sometimes it helps to read the user guide. Skip the first innumerable pages with health and safety stuff and then there's a useful section giving a tour of the computer.

John

 

Seems like this is obvious to all, but where can I find the SystemSoftware folder? (I have a series 900x4d actually, but i figure this is a sort of temporary folder for instals and i actually don't know where that would be...)

 

It's not created automatically.

In SW Update use the Save Setup files option (you get to choose the path).

John

 

Thanks a lot John! This is just great, I got really tired of all settings for the touchpad resetting and being so cumbersome to restore...

 

Hey guys, I'm new to this forum and this is sort of my last resort... I recently bought an Ativ Book 8 and since then, the one I currently have is my fourth! The reason for that is that I've been experiencing a nerve racking issue with the touchpad and already returned 3 laptops. Basically every once in a while it goes crazy on me and starts to move erratically.

I found a video on youtube of a dell laptop that has the exact same issue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y79H00oicFE
The thing is, it's impossible to work with and after paying over a thousand euros for it, I guess I was expecting a better touchpad... Since all the notebooks I've received so far had the same issue, I figured it would be something commonly discussed in reviews and such but it's been impossible to find a solution online.

So far, i've basically done everything I think is possible in terms of driver updates, windows updates, etc. including reverting the Elan driver to the default one, which only took away the functionality leaving the problem.

I really enjoy everything else on this laptop and in my opinion it's the best for this price range right now on the market and I don't want to have to return it. Any help would be appreciated.

Great forum by the way!

 

Does the problem occur both when plugged into the mains and when running on battery?

Is any other mains powered equipment plugged into the computer?

John

 

Hi John! Thanks for the quick reply.

It happens both on battery and when charging. It often seems to be triggered by the two finger scrolling but sometimes it just happens spontaneously. After the last post, I tried browsing the thread to see if I could find some information and one post seemed to be adressing the same issue and it seems some laptops might have some welding defect that affects both the touchpad and the wifi performance. I don't know what to make of this now...

 

'm trying to remember which settings people previously found provided relief from erratic behaviour.

It might be to make sure that drag and drop is disabled. The answer is somewhere further up this thread.

John

 

Thank you for the reply.

I'll make sure to read the thread thoroughly. If I can't find an answer I guess I'll have to return it.

Edit: After reading the whole thread, I didn't find a solution for the problem although I found several posts dealing with the same issue. What I got from them is that it's most likely caused by the hardware, maybe some kind of grounding issue or a build defect. Either way it doesn't seem to go away with driver tweaking. I guess I'll have to return it and maybe try to get another one. If I manage to get one from another batch or the silver one (I have the mate black version), maybe it'll come without the problem.

Thanks again for you're help John. It's good to see people help others without expecting anything in return, pretty rare these days!

 

Hi RR551, I have the same problem as you. Did you ever get it returned, and did that fix the problem? Since I've owned my laptop for 10 months already I'm not so optimistic about getting it replaced, but I'd be interested in knowing if that may solve the trackpad issue.

 

I find my touchpad goes erratic when the disk is under a lot of load e.g. when doing a lot of file copying. That was the item that peaked in the task-manager anyway. Because most of my file transfers are over the network, I guess it could be wifi related as well.

I have windows 8.1, updated from the original windows 8 install. The update seemed to go fairly well. I have ELAN touchpad driver 11.7.19.9. I have just disabled drag-and-drop using ETDSimpleUI.exe, so I will keep you posted if this has changed anything.

In the meantime, has anyone else seen erratic movement when using the touchpad under similar conditions (and particularly just those conditions of high disk/network usage)?

 

I have the same problem on my 900x3e. Touchpad almost useless under heavy load on the SSD. Both on and off network.

Sent from my LG-D802 using Tapatalk

 

Try raising the priority of the two ETD processes in Task Manager (go to the Details tab and right click on each process).

John

 

Hey guys. I have the exact same problem (mouse jumps around when SSD is under heavy load). I tried your solution, John. Unfortunately it did not work :-/
Has anybody figured it out yet?

Greetings!

 

Try checking if silent mode is enabled. I had the same erratic behavior on my Ativ 9 Plus during file transfers until I turned the setting to off. Auto doesn't seem to help in this case.

I'm not sure if the control panel software is the same between models though.

 

Silent mode is a trap that catches many people. It works by locking the CPU down to minimum speed thereby reducing the CPU power and heat. The "Auto" in the Silent Mode settings relates to the fan operation (I think it is explained in the user guide) and not to turning Silent Mode on and off.

John

 

Based on another thread you had commented on, I thought I'd try it since I felt that the performance of the laptop was slow. It's way smoother in general now in the off setting.

 

I'm looking for a way to increase the mouse pointer speed beyond the maximum that is offered via the touchpad configuration program from Samsung. Does anyone know if there is a registry value that influences the mouse pointer speed? (on a NP900XE with elan touchpad)

 

See this post earlier in the thread on how to get the ETDAniConf control panel, which has the totality of settings options for Elan touchpads. Note that you have to change values in HKCU\Software\Elantech\SmartPadDisplay before loading ETDAniConf in order to reveal all Settings.

 

Yes, but which of those settings is the right one for the mouse pointer speed?

 

OK, sorry. I haven't been through all those settings options (there are A LOT when you unhide everything). Once I got my touchpad working well, I never had to play with it again, so I only got so far with testing the various settings.

 

Hi guys!

I'm new here but I've already benefited from the advices in this thread.

Having Win 8.1 and ELANTECH_11.6.8.001 installed I managed to:

1) Set two-finger tap to menu
2) Set three-finger tap to middle click

I'd also like to have:

3) Three-finger swipe left to back in browsers
4) Three-finger swipe right to forward in browsers
5) Fix ability to disable the touchpad
6) Set touchpad disabled when a mouse is connected

Could you perhaps help me with that? Experimenting with erratic keys in the registry is a menace.

Many thanks in advance!

 

Hi Antrix, welcome to NBR.

Look back a few posts in this thread for discussion of the ETDAniConf control panel which provides far more options.

 

Thank you!

I forgot to add that I did set all the SmartPadDisplay keys to 1 (show). Then I was able to see and check/uncheck functions in the control panel.
However, even after reboots only a few worked.
Besides the ThreeFingerMove had by default PageUp/PageDown behavior which is not what I'd like to achieve.

Thanks

 

Got it. You're way ahead then. I configured some three-finger gestures, but never use them, so I don't even remember what I configured. Two-finger scroll is a must, I use that all the time. I have Reverse disabled (whenever I have to do anything on my friend's Mac I am lost )

Other than that, I am afraid I have not tried most of the settings in ETDAniConf.

Do note that it can take some time after booting before the Elan settings are loaded -- and until then it works like a plain mouse. There is also the issue described here where the settings are not loaded at all when resuming after sleep. It sounds like that may be what you are seeing.

 

I never considered the reverse scroll an intuitive way to do that. Similarly, I always get angry when I work on Macs

It seems the whole thing with the drivers is a trade-off. You get to set one function at a cost of another one.
I was able to add de facto only 2) in my case:

while breaking 3-6 compared with the default driver 'Asus Smartpad Gestures'. Maybe it's not worth it...

It bugs me anyway why would they [Asus, Elantech] limit the functionality on purpose.

 

I forgot to comment on these:

You can disable the touchpad on the Input tab in Settings or by pressing Fn-F5.



And there is an option to disable the touchpad when a USB mouse is connected (in the standard Touchpad control panel as well as on the Touchpad tab of the Mouse control panel).





Do those not work for you? If so, you definitely should re-install your Touchpad driver, possibly looking for a newer version in SW Update.

 

I've got entirely different driver apparently.
Could you specify yours? Looks promising

 

My Elan Touchpad driver is a pretty old version 11.7.10.4 which I found in SW Update under Win8 drivers for model NP880Z5E-X03CA almost a year ago. They have since added Win8.1 drivers for that model (and other newer models) including Elan driver version 11.7.19.9, which I have not yet tried.

As for Settings, I use version 2.3.0.17, which can be found in SW Update under model NP940X5J.

Make sure to uninstall existing drivers (using Programs and Features control panel) and reboot, before installing the new ones. You will have to re-do all power tweaks, Adaptive Brightness etc after you re-install Settings.

 

Thanks! However, I'm afraid my laptop couldn't cope with those drivers and I had to do a system-restore
I guess I give up

Thank you for your help.

 

Ouch, I am sorry to hear that. You already said you have Win8.1 (like I do). Which model do you have? If your model has an Elan touchpad, I am surprised that it wouldn't be compatible with this driver version.

One thought that comes to mind: I had this driver installed already under Win8, before my Win8.1 update. I have not tried to install it anew on Win8.1, and will have to add this to my (now rather long) list of tests for next time I feel like messing up my installation. I used to do that quite happily and frequently, then restored a backup (or clean installed) when I was done experimenting. But as fun as that can be, it is also very time consuming

 

I knew the risk I gave up because I ended up having inactive keyboard and touchpad. At that point I realized I can't afford losing my precious data. I guess I made the wrong combination of uninstalls, reboots, installs etc.

My model is Asus N750JV and even though the topic is about Samsung Chronos, the drivers mentioned here were working (well, more or less ).

 

Ahhh, I missed that little detail, that this wasn't a Samsung computer (although I do recall an Asus reference in one of your earlier posts, which mystified me a bit). I agree, it was worth a shot to try a Samsung driver with your Elan pad. Interesting if you say that some versions of them work on yours, but not others.

Edit: Did you also install Samsung Settings? That I would definitely NOT expect to be compatible with anything but Samsung computers, whereas Elan drivers are more likely.

 

Touchpad Driver_11.7.2.1 seems pretty good on my NP700z7c. Default settings on Windows 8. For some reason Touchpad Driver_11.7.19.9 hides some settings by default.

 

Thank you for confirming that. I'll have to give that driver a try someday. Does it have the Reverse scrolling option in the simple (standard) control panel? Several members seem to be lacking that option.

View attachment 113636

 

Yes it does, and I believe it's also identical to the screen that you posted.

I wanted to update to 11.7.19.9, but for some reason they decided to hide that option as well as the drop down box for two finger tap/middle click, which I use regularly.

 

Perfect, thank you, that's great info. Surely this must be why several users are missing the Reverse option, if it is hidden in the latest driver version. Why on earth would Samsung do that?

I saved a link to your post as my standard answer for next time I see that question.

 

Yes, that's very odd. But then again, maybe I just did sth wrong this time.

@Edit: No, I thought the same and I did not install the Samsung Settings app.

 

Hi, has anyone found newer driver for ELAN touchpad on 870z5e samsung laptop or similar? I am trying some from here but none seems to work: Elan

 

Have you looked through Samsung's SW Update's database using the Find Model function?

The newest I can quickly find are (i) 11.7.20.5 for Windows 7 and (ii) 11.7.19.9 for Windows 8.1 as listed under the NP870Z5G-X03DE (Germany> Series 8).

John

 

Hi, I have 11.7.19.9 installed by default as latest for my NP780Z5E, but I dont really like how it works

 

Thanks for this, and to all on this thread - after my last update, I lost the ability for the trackpad to turn off automatically when USB mouse is present. Sometimes I use one, sometimes I don't, it's about 75/25, most often I'm using a mouse. This post & thread reminded me how to re-set that. Thanks all!

 

Does anyone know how to properly roll back the driver, or obtain the previous version of the ELAN driver for Windows 8.1? The latest has removed options such as reverse scroll and inertia. I've taken Ratsey's advice and downloaded the setup files and ran the ETDAniConf.exe file that came with it to adjust the settings that were missing (plus a slew of others).

It's really annoying that they removed these features from the latest control panel. The previous driver gave me no issues and I updated for no reason (serves me right not to check here first!).

When I did a roll back in device manager, while the driver was the correct previous version, and the control panel now showed the missing settings, the "Elan Smart-Pad" device was no longer listed under the Touchpad tab in "Mouse properties" (it was disassociated).

I'd hate to use two utilities to control one trackpad. Is there a way to roll back to the previous driver and control panel?

 

It is indeed strange why Samsung would remove useful features such as the Reverse scrolling option in their latest drivers, essentially locking users to Mac style scrolling (which always confused my fingers). Maybe it is a directive from Microsoft who wants to mimic Apple in everything.

As pointed out by John in the other thread, you can indeed use ETDAniConf to configure this -- along with numerous other options and gestures that are not accessible through the standard control panel. The discussion around this post provides much more detail on that, including how to reveal even more options in ETDAniConf.

BUT, that said, I recently rolled back from Touchpad Driver version 11.7.19.9 (the one without the Reverse option) to version 11.7.10.4. I had Reverse configured through ETDAniConf, so that wasn't my main concern. But I found my touchpad to behave erratically with the newer driver, whereas the older one had worked perfectly for me for the last year, before I tried the new one. I am very happy again after rolling back.

I do NOT recommend rolling back through Device Manager, as this can leave a mess behind. Instead, I recommend you just uninstall the current Elan driver using the Programs and Feature control panel, reboot, then install the driver you want. Version 11.7.10.4 is available in SW Update under Win8 drivers for model NP880Z5E-X03CA -- among other places.

 

I've since reverted to 11.7.5.5 and I'm back to normal. The option to download this version was available when I selected "Windows 8" instead of "Windows 8.1" in SW Update. For the lazy, here's a download of it from my site http://marriedgeek.com/files/Touchpad_Driver_11.7.5.5.zip. As mentioned earlier, the best approach is to uninstall the driver from Programs and Features and not rolling back the driver in device manager (as I tried and failed at).

I was fed up with the 11.7.19.19 driver that seems to be tied to Windows 8.1. I've noticed with this driver that, not only do you lose the "Reverse" option under "Scroll", but you also lose the option to disable inertia scroll AND (correct me if I'm wrong), the ability to control options for drag-and-drop.

The OTHER thing I noticed with version 11.7.19.19 is when using two-finger tap to mimic right-click (pop-up menu). At least when I was using it, if my two fingers were not completely horizontal, then the pop-up action would not happen. Meaning, if my two fingers were aligned vertically on the touchpad, it wouldn't work. When I reverted to the older version, two-finger taps would occur regardless of how my fingers were oriented (which is what I want).

My touchpad is back to normal. :thumbsup:

 

Thank you for sharing this. Two finger tap not registering half the time was actually my biggest gripe with version 11.7.19.9. I described it as "erratic" in my post, because it never occurred to me that it was "by design" (fingers having to be horizontally aligned). The older driver (in my case version 11.7.10.4) registers two finger tap every time you tap two fingers, which I think is a more logical design for this feature

 

Especially when hands usually come in at an angle, and the pointer finger is slightly shorter than the middle finger.

 

New to the thread. Most excellent discussion on Samsung Laptops I've ever seen! Kudos to all those who participate!

Has anyone tried to replace the trackpad? I have a NP700Z5B, which I love dearly. The left click has worn out. I've found a replacement for cheap, but can't find a soul who has attempted to tackle this themselves. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated. (Yes I have a docking station and wireless mouse, but I'm a research engineer and do a lot of fieldwork where that is cumbersome to deal with).

 

The touchpad is an integral part of the complete keyboard / keyboard surround / palmrest unit which Samsung calls "unit housing top".

That's not to say that a DIY replacement of only the touchpad can't be done. You would first need to find the right size of pad with the right connector and then figure out how to remove the old one and fix the new one in place. You might want to also identify a source for the complete unit housing top in case everything goes wrong. Samsungparts.com should list the part number (if you have the US keyboard).

John