Vaio Z Touchpad Intermittently Broken - any ideas?

Hi,

I wonder if anyone has any ideas for my Vaio Z11 (custom config, 2 years old), whose touchpad is intermittently erratic and random. When it is misbehaving (approx twice per week or so):

- cursor recognises vertical movements but not horizontal
- cursor jumps all over the place, sometimes even when finger not on pad
- on a smooth finger movement, cursor stops mid swipe
- can sometimes be fixed by squeezing bottom left hand corner of touchpad
- "moodpad" shows a vertical strip down the middle of the pad
- tends to generally happen most predictably when cold running on battery (not usually a problem once warmed up)
- I generally now use an external mouse to avoid using the touchpad...

I have put 2 videos on Youtube to demonstrate the problem:
Sony VAIO Z11 Broken Touchpad - YouTube
Sony Vaio Z11 Touchpad Not working - YouTube (2nd touch showing the squeeze fix)

I have already tried:
1. Installing the latest Windows 7 64 bit synaptics drivers / various other drivers
2. Removing/readding the hardware etc
3. Cleaned touchpad multiple times
4. Turning on/off all extra features (palm detection etc)
5. Increasing/decreasing sensitivity

I have decided that this must be a hardware problem? I have emailed Sony, but they won't consider anything further until I have completely wiped the laptop/restored to factory settings. This is my main machine and I work in web development, so reinstalling everything is quite a big deal to have to go through, and will waste a good day of work.

Also as the problem is intermittent (once/twice per week), I can imagine that it will behave beautifully for the Sony engineer, who will conclude that there isn't a problem etc...! For an excellent £3k machine, it does seem a little disappointing that the touchpad is letting everything down.

Does anyone have any other ideas or suggestions? Any advice would be *very* much appreciated.

 

apparently this is quite common, and as we speak i am experiencing the same problem.

does restarting/sleep and resume fix the problem right away until it goes broken again?

the above works for me ^ but i think it's hapenning alot more often now.

my moodpad seems to be putting out a different pattern though, i get like a faint thin-lined half moon eclipse glow just above the fingerprint reader part... but sometimes i don't see anything at all on the moodpad and the problem is still hapenning, ...[would like to try and see if you could relate to this to build a pattern......] but the pressure graph always registers some level of pressure when the problem is manifesting itself so thats why it jumps like that when its deciding which area is really your finger so it jumps less closer so source of problem but more from further out and tends to always move in that direction so if the problem area is by fingerprint reader it will tend to jump down alot instead of up?

when i look through between the touchpad and the buttons at a 45 degree angle i see what i think is the touchpad under the silver/coloured gliter
plastic.. im guessing some hairs or fine particle or even moisture could get in there sandwhiched between the layers and trigger something like that?

but i have no idea how these pads work so dont know.

 

Hi guys, I experience the exact same problems with my Vaio Z13 !

Did you manage to fix it ?

Thank you !

Edit: I tried a dust remover in between the thin layer of plastic and what is below, with no real success. It changes the behaviour of the touchpad for some times but no real improvements...


Restarting fix it for some time too but never long. I simply cannot use my touchpad for more than a few minutes... Sad.

 

hi guys...

i have exactly same problem here.
after 3 years, touchpad seem also have same problems that yours.
my first button is also hard to press now....
maybe the problem is : bad contact with one or both button when pressed ?
mayba a "touch" sensibility problem ?

how to desassemble to touchpad to check it ?