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Win 8.1 Touchpad Issues
SurrenderBill
Posts: 19,084 Forum Member
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I was one of the unfortunates who bought a new laptop when Windows 8 was launched, and hated it. Luckily 8.1 came and while it didn't address all the problems, it did work (after a factory reset) and was less frustrating. The one problem that 8.1 did bring though was with left-click, it goes through phases of hardly working it all. I put up with it for a while presuming it was simply a hardware issue on this lousy Samsung system, but after eventually reading around I found that others were having the same issue. Changing the delay to 'no delay' brings out about a temporary fix, but it reverts back to being temperamental after a while. If I reinstall the Samsung drivers that also fixes the issue temporarily, for about a week or so. I'm not sure if it's coincidence, but playing Angry Birds on FB seems to bring the problem on faster, but I'm not sure why flash would be the problem. Anyway, any suggestions about a fix would be appreciated, it gets pretty old reinstalling all the time. I could try using the Microsoft driver, but that gives no option to disable tapping, something I prefer to do for safer browsing.
So just to be clear, I have:
- Tried changing the delay.
- Reinstalling the drivers.
- Factory reset.
I get by, but I'm not up on all the jargon, so please don't baffle me with technospeak. I'm also not keen on visiting sites that I don't know, so I'd rather have a solution rather than be directed to whichever corner of the net you might know about.
Thanks in advance.
So just to be clear, I have:
- Tried changing the delay.
- Reinstalling the drivers.
- Factory reset.
I get by, but I'm not up on all the jargon, so please don't baffle me with technospeak. I'm also not keen on visiting sites that I don't know, so I'd rather have a solution rather than be directed to whichever corner of the net you might know about.
Thanks in advance.
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If the latter I would be tempted to go to Samsung's website and see if there are any updated Win8.1 specific drivers and install those as a first attempt at a fix.
What is the exact model of the laptop? That might help.
There is also the possibility that there is some third party driver available, (for example my laptop uses a Synaptics touchpad), that might be more current than the Samsung version. Could be worth a try.
This appears to be an ELAN touchpad.
The Samsung update software detects my model number and supplies the drivers accordingly. Like I say, they work fine for a while, as they are just now since I reinstalled again today, but it's just a waiting game before the problem kicks in again.
So I wonder if the drivers are OK for Windows 8.1? You would have thought Samsung would have made sure of that but who knows?
I notice in the blurb accompanying the drivers on the Samsung website it says that you should use Control Panel to uninstall any software listed for the touchpad first then re-install the drivers. Not sure if that is the procedure you followed or whether this software updater you used does it automatically?
If the old drivers are not being uninstalled correctly then always possible something left behind is screwing things up. I wonder if it would be worth using something like Revo Uninstaller (http://www.revouninstaller.com/revo_uninstaller_free_download.html) to see if that can remove all traces of the old drivers and install afresh?
As for the procedure, I simply went to device manager, and installed the touchpad driver from there, prompting a restart, and another restart, then I tend to power off altogether to make sure it's all sorted and then boot up again. Then I get the Samsung driver through their software, another forced restart, and then again I choose the power down route. Works lovely going that way... for a while. I'm not sure how much good the revo route would be, because even after a full factory reset this problem is still there, and surely there are no remnants left over after that. I will give your idea a go next time though, no point dismissing suggestions before trying them.
Sometimes I've found that simply changing the delay settings can make it work better again, but that doesn't always work. It does seem that there is some sort of compatibility issue from what you've said, but it's odd that it works for a while before happening again. Very frustrating.
Cheers for taking the time to have a dig around.
Why did Windows 8 ever happen? Glad they made it better with 8.1... but I'm afraid I still love XP, even if 7 is probably as good... maybe I should steal wifey's laptop. I always end up needing a laptop at the wrong time, my last one was Vista... rubbish!
But if you have completely re-installed Windows from scratch then that should have completely zapped everything anyway. Though if you, or Windows, did a driver update immediately afterwards there could have been some remnant of the standard Windows drivers that are likely to have been installed with Windows left behind.