Touch Pad
My touch pad goes erratic,slows down and sticks and then is not easy to control.It seems worse after I have been on the computer for some time. Have had it back to the shop but they only tried it for a few minutes and said there was nothing wrong. Have you any suggestions?
Asked by: Stromah Abbott
September 2nd, 2009 at 7:53 am
Hi Stromah,
I assume the touch-pad you refer to is the usual sort fitted to a laptop just in front of the space-bar.
It’s possible that the touch-pad has been damaged in some way, but that’s unlikely, as they are pretty robust.
The PC’s processor may be so busy doing something else that it ignores the input from the touch-pad. If you have lots of applications running at the same time, they may be reducing the PC’s capacity to respond to the touch-pad. Try using the PC with only one application running and see if the problem still persists.
Check that the PC has sufficient memory (RAM and virtual memory) in order to work well. I regard 1GB as the minimum RAM for XP and 2GB for Vista; they will work with less but tend to be sluggish. RAM is cheap these days and a RAM upgrade works wonders for a PC’s performance. You also need to check the virtual memory settings (Control Panel – System – Advanced – Performance – Advanced). It needs to be equal to or up to 2x the installed RAM, but you can set it to be controlled automatically by Windows, which is usually best.
It’s also possible that the device driver for the touch-pad is outdated. You can check whether there is a newer version at the website of the PC’s manufacturer, usually under the “Support” section. If there’s a newer version than the one installed, download and install it. Device drivers can be checked via Control Panel – System – Hardware – Device Manager.
September 16th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
I have been having touchpad issues, and I know just how annoying it is, it is INFURIATING!
My first question is, is this a new machine or not? I bought an Acer 5735 laptop from ebuyer, in July, and sent it back as the touchpad made it unusable; it had a hyper sensitive zoom funtion that meant windows reduced to 10% on a whim, and when working in a program, it would not allow me to select, highlight, edit at all – for example, trying to select a cell in a spreadsheet would lead to you selecting whole rows, columns, sheets at a time. Anyway, ebuyer took it back, agreed it was faulty, and sent me a new one. Which had excatly the same problem. I also did some research online and found out I was not the only one having this problem – though, quelle surprise, none of the reviews on ebuyer make any ref to this issue.
I then insisted that a refund was due, as I did not want a 3rd model of the machine. Ebuyer were not very helpful, saying that refunds only applied to returns made 14 days after the purchase of laptop 1 – which is clearly impossible as laptop 1 was now superseded by laptop 2. Anyway, many (expensive) phone calls later, and they have agreed to take laptop 2 back and if they also agree it has a fault, refund me. Let’s see: UPS collected it today ….
My observations re your problem would therefore be, these things can be wonky and if you know that you have problems, document them (so that when other people don’t find them you can insist) and if it is a new computer, then it’s not fit for purpose if you can’t work on it.
Having not had a new machine for years, my other observation is, touchpads do seem to have got a lot more ‘complicated’ – as in zoom features that you might not want it your finger carelessly hovers in a certain place. Refer to user guides/ manuals to see if you can see what they are ‘meant’ to do. The Acer had absolutely no documentation with it, call me old fashioned, but that’s quite annoying.
Oh, and one more thing (!) I have since gone into a shop to play with a range of keyboards and touchpads, because boy are they different, and online shopping can’t really give you that touch-feel test.
Good luck! I will let you know about the Acer’s ailments.