My laptop has been driving me up the wall, the touch pad has been playing up, instead of a good solid “click” it has been behaving as a loose connection as if pressing the left or right buttons was a double or even a triple click or no click at al - so intermittent. The separate buttons above the touch pad were fine but I have got used to using the touch pad exclusively and using a mouse doesn’t cut it!
It was so bad that I was thinking of replacing the laptop because it is a few years old but apart from this problem it is still fast and otherwise works perfectly. Anyway I have ordered a new touchpad from Amazon but it has to come from the USA so won’t get here until nearly Christmas.
After I ordered the touchpad it suddenly occurred to me to wonder if the touchpad from my older laptop would fit? This is a Lenovo Thinkpad T470 the older one a T430s (or something similar) but it was too late by then. So annoying.
BTW I shall be really pissed off if i dismantle the laptop to replace the pad and discover a loose connector.
I wonder if it is a weakness on Lenovo laptops? Anybody else had this trouble?
Sue my wife had touchpad problems on her old Apple laptop. the local shop wanted a load of money to sort it out. I did mange to get her to let me look at it, so I ordered a set of mini screwdrivers and a new touchpad.
Opened it up and replaced the pad just a plug in job and it was fixed. saved a bomb on what the repair guiys wanted.
later on it was making a noise ( cooling fan motor squeal) but she would not let me have a look. She took it to Currys and boy did they mess things up. not only not fix the problem but changed the drive with all her stuff on it and lost it. I think she learned her lesson to let me have a look first
G’day there mate. I do own and run a Lenovo lappy amongst others, but I use an optic mouse to carryout my navigations, so I cannot advise you. On the odd occasion I use the internal pad, I’ve never experienced any bother, so your guess at a lose/dirty connection might be the answer.
I can’t stand the touchpad thingy, far too imprecise (I do lots of electrical drawings) and always use an optical mouse LongDriver, I’ll send Bruce my touch thingy, or better still, take it there myself…Oh! wait a minute, I haven’t been jabbed…
Yes, reinstalled the driver, all the usual things.
It went wrong some time ago and i discovered that instead of pressing at the corners pressing slightly further up the pad worked Ok but even that has failed (or rather, become unreliable) now. The touch part works fine it is only the clicks that don’t.
The new part has just arrived, if it looks right I will dismantle this laptop and attempt to fit it.
Will report back.
BTW considering it came all the way from the USA I thought that it arrived remarkably promptly. I only ordered it just over a week ago - that is pre-pandemic delivery times.
Actually that previous message is a classic example of what the touchpad left click does.
I selected the entire phrase “Microswitch Failure?” but the left click is intermittent and double or triple clicks so it unselected the phrase and then selected the ? in the one press. Another example is that one click on a word selects the whole sentence or paragraph because of the intermittent contact.
Well it is done! All appear to be good, the laptop fired up after the operation and the touchpad seems to work OK.
Annoyingly I can’t for the life of me find my spudger (for prying things apart) so I had to use a small flat bladed screwdriver. Alas there is no video of the procedure merely a photo showing the area of operation and both touch pads - the faulty one on the left, the new one on the right.
This computer has two batteries, a removable one and an internal one, it is mounted over the the touch pad and it still connected in the photo but lying over the fan and centre of the motherboard. The touchpad was held in with four screws, the battery two screws. Easy to remove but worried that they might drop into the case.
The only difficulty was connecting the little blue tab to the touchpad, it was so small that I had to get a magnifying glass to see if it was connected properly. (Bottom centre of the photo)
By far the hardest part was replacing the cover, it was only held on with five screws and they were captive but there were so many plastic clips around the periphery of the case that getting one in could ping out an adjacent one but it was all good in the end.
Had a look at the micro switches on the old touch pad, they are very crude, I wonder if they could be saved with a bit of meths?
All that remains is for me to mount an all out search for my spudger.
BTW having seen the crudity of the switch I just wonder if the problem is a faulty de-bounce circuit. From memory, at their crudest a de-bounce circuit is just a capacitor and resistor placed across the switch, I vaguely remember they were quite important when I worked in telephony but any switch where a definite, accurate transition from off to on is crucial needs one.
