Dell Inspiron 4100 Touchpad problem

Shad0r

I've a laptop (as in the title) and the touchpad is causing the mouse pointer to wander around the screen. At first using a USB mouse solved the problem most of the time but now I cant even use that as the pointer has a life of its own.

I've reinstalled windows and that didnt help which leads me to believe its a hardware failure. I looked in device manager but cant seem to disable the touchpad without disabling the usb mouse too.

Anybody have any idea what I can do to fix this? I dont need the touchpad and never use it so if there is a way of disabling it I would greatly appreciate hearing about it.

Cheers
Neil

Ouijaboard

This is a common problem that affected a host of dell models which had a 'trackball' or whatever the little 'nib' in the middle of the keyboard is called?

There is one and only one way to fix this issue, you have to lift the keyboard and disconnect the 'trackball' thingy from the mainboard....do not disconnect the touchpad, the touchpad itself is not the problem but suffers from the drift caused by the malfunctioning ball in the middle of the keyboard.

refer to here:
all 14 pages discussing the problem:
http://delltalk.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=insp_input&message.id=20305&view=by_date_ascending&page=14

or just check it out on google and you will see that hundreds of dell users have been plagued by the issue...the fix above u will lose use of the 'ball' but not the touchpad, and you wont be tempted to smash the laptop off the wall

Ouijaboard

if you want to know how to get at the connectors under the keyboard goto:

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/ins4100/en/sm_en/index.htm

look in 'Removing and Replacing Parts'

just in case you do some damage

Brother had same problem, knew I had the info somewhere!

TommyGun

Shad0r,
This is known dell problem. Is your laptop still under warrenty? If so dell will swap it out for you.
You can try to remove the 'Synaptics pointing Device' in add/remove programs. This may help.

Hope this helps.
Tommy

Shad0r

Cheers lads...

The laptop isnt under warranty anymore so I'll have to go it alone. I installed the latest synaptics point device drivers and its calmed the problem down. If it starts going raj again I'll have a shot at your suggestion cougar1.

Thanks again,
Neil

maidhc

My old thinkpad used to do that too. Seemed to depend on the weather what way it would go, but normally drifted to the left.

I lived with it.