Synaptics Touchpad Trouble

Hey guys, I have a Panasonic Toughbook CF-52 that I'm doing some cleanup work on for someone, and it has an issue with the touchpad that I thought I'd ask you all about. Namely, the mouse cursor/pointer tends to skip and jump about when you are moving it, esp. if it is near an icon or button. It doesn't always do it, but it happens most of the time. I un-installed the drivers, got the latest from synaptics website, installed them etc... didn't make much difference, it even seemed slightly better with generic windows mouse drivers. (XP btw). I tweaked mouse settings and it seems to work the best with tap to click disabled. With the other settings it seemed to either make no difference or to make it worse if I changed them from default. I believe it is a case of a hypersensitive touchpad and it thinks there is movement/pressure on it when there isn't. Any ideas?

had the exact same problem with a dell c600 a long time ago.
the actual pad had become faulty (which probably happened when they spilled a 20oz cherry coke IN the laptop). there was no fixing it without replacing the mousepad.

fortunately the rest of the system was okay after the spillage.



//ok ok..... it was ME... i spilled the coke in my laptop... shup!
at least i was able to get another year of use out of it (i just used a trackball mouse to ignore the entire touchpad problem)

I had this problem before...unfortunately it was on linux so I don't know if what I did would help your case. I actually tried installing/compiling different tablet drivers from other systems and got the tablet functioning correctly. I used Wacom drivers even though it wasn't a wacom, and it actually worked. lol linux.

yeah, pretty much determined that the touchpad would need to be replaced - client chose to have me disable it and go with a wireless mouse instead... better option and much cheaper as well....