Laptop Touchpad Going Haywire!

Vic Vinegar

I had a laptop left up to me the other day to have a look at. The touchpad is going really mental on it, as in, travelling about the screen by itself and clicking away at things with no input from the user. I've not really seen this behaviour before myself and was wondering what to do to fix it?

For troubleshooting so far i've tried

Booting into safe mode
Reinstalling Windows
Plugging in an external mouse

All of these methods didn't help at all, still same problem

It's looking to me like it's a hardware issue so would there be a way of opening the laptop and disabling/disconnecting the touchpad from inside the case somehow? if there was a way to do that safely and just use a standard mouse instead, that would be an acceptable solution for the owner.

Any ideas?

It's a Sony Vaio laptop btw

Cheers.

Alanstrainor

Have you tried cleaning the touchpad? It could be hardware issues, but I have had similar problems when grease got onto the touchpad in the past.

bonzodog2

Try disabling it in Device Manager. Also you could get the latest drivers, and also boot from a Live Linux CD/USB stick to determine if it is a hardware issue

Vic Vinegar

Alanstrainor wrote: »

Have you tried cleaning the touchpad? It could be hardware issues, but I have had similar problems when grease got onto the touchpad in the past.

I tried that yes, no dice

bonzodog2 wrote: »

Try disabling it in Device Manager. Also you could get the latest drivers, and also boot from a Live Linux CD/USB stick to determine if it is a hardware issue

Can't do that as the touchpad is going haywire as i said, pretty much impossible to do anything. Will see if i can try the Linux usb thing though.

bonzodog2

Check youtube for disassembly video tutorials, you could prob take off the keyboard and detach the trackpad cable from below it.

Vic Vinegar

bonzodog2 wrote: »

Check youtube for disassembly video tutorials, you could prob take off the keyboard and detach the trackpad cable from below it.

That's what i was thinking, will give it a go, cheers.

Kencollins

Is it the same issue with the laptop plugged in and on battery? I have seen laptops with grounding issues that cause the trackpad to go nuts when the laptop is plugged in.

bonzodog2

The ribbon cable connectors on laptops are generally of 2 main kinds, one has 2 plastic pieces either side of the cable, which need to be moved gently in the direction of the cable, the other has a flap that lifts up. Both allow the the cable to be removed. Take more care with the flap type, they become detached and are a PITA to put back!

Vic Vinegar

Kencollins wrote: »

Is it the same issue with the laptop plugged in and on battery? I have seen laptops with grounding issues that cause the trackpad to go nuts when the laptop is plugged in.

The problem isn't there anymore when it isn't plugged in, didn't realise before cos the battery life is absolutely gash and pretty much needs to be plugged in all the time!

Nice one!

ED E

FN+ F? should also have done this for you OP. On my Vaio its F1 but it varies from unit to unit.

Bit small but you can see the icon in F1 below:

bonzodog2

ED E wrote: »

FN+ F? should also have done this for you OP. On my Vaio its F1 but it varies from unit to unit.

Bit small but you can see the icon in F1 below:

I have a Packard Bell laptop, Fn+F6 disables the touchpad.

Also, you can use tab and arrow keys to select the item in DevMan. I just tried this but it seemed to just detect it again. Perhaps you can disable it in BIOS?