clickpad does not respond right away when tapping

[anasta5ia]

Hello,

I have constant issues with the clickpad installed on my laptop. I can say this is the WORST touchpad/clickpad I have EVER had. It was repaired TWO times by HP under my warranty coverage. First, they changed some wires/cables inside and completely uninstalled Windows 10; then, because the problems were still present, they installed a new clickpad, i.e. changed the hardware. Some issues were solved, but others continue to be present.

At this point, no matter which settings I try to use for the clickpad, via Settings -> Devices -> Mouse and Touchpad -> Mouse properties -> ClickPad Settings -> Properties for Synaptics ClickPad, very often, but not always, the clickpad does not respond when I tap the first time after I was doing something else. When I tap the second or third time, I finally start to get responses. In other words, every time I tap somewhere – to close a window, to follow a hyperlink, to put the cursor in a text, to select a portion of a text, etc. – my first tap does NOTHING. I have to repeat my tap at least one more time before there is a response. I may tap hard or very gently, it just doesn’t matter. It applies both to the single tap and to the double tap. Same applies to the Two-Finger Tapping.

The Pointing -> Sensitivity feature is at its maximum. (If I reduce it, the clickpad becomes even more nonresponsive.) The Smart Sense feature is almost Off. (If I put it closer to Max, nothing changes.) The Filter Activation Time option, that supposedly blocks the clickpad for some period of time after typing, is at zero. Same is for the feature Settings -> Devices -> Mouse and Touchpad -> Touchpad (to help prevent the cursor from accidentally moving while you type, change the delay before clicks work) -> No delay. Turning on or off the option of clicking (the button on the clickpad) does not change anything. Clicks are working fine. All drivers are up to date. The entire Windows 10 OS I up to date. When I attach my USB mouse, the mouse works just fine, there are no delays in responses.

I guess contacting HP for the third time will not be fruitful. Did anybody have the same issue? If so, how did you solve it? Other users seemed to have a similar issue (http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Hardware-and-Upgrade-Questions/Synaptics-Clickpad-Smartsense-M... but could not find a solution.

Thank you a lot in advance!

[potty12]

Similar problems here. Extremely frustrating to say the least. Clicks not responding after many clicks, then at other times works normally on my HP Pavilion gaming notebook. Left clicking acting as right click and bringing up properties etc. 

Disabling Smartsense cured that last one, but is hardly what I expect to have to do.

[anasta5ia]

Thanks for sharing your experience. I think I recently found a solution (a partial solution at least) for this problem. I will now publish an update to my post.

[anasta5ia · Accepted solution]

I think I recently found a solution (a partial solution at least) for this problem. The root of the problem seems to be the drivers, supplied by Microsoft. The drivers, even new ones, for this clickpad are simply horrible.

What’s worse, updates for these junk drivers are installed in my system without any consent from my part whatsoever. Trying to prevent the updates, using a program from Microsoft (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3073930 ), is useless - the updates for the clickpad are installed anyways.

What I did to make my clickpad work significantly better is the following:

1. Download a driver directly from the maker of the clickpad, Synaptics (http://www.synaptics.com/resources ). For my device, I used “Windows 10 I2C Devices v19.0.19.1”. Do not install the driver as yet, your system will not allow you to do so because of a “newer” version of the driver “already installed”.
2. Turn off automatic updates in your operating system, using the following protocol (http://www.thewindowsclub.com/turn-off-windows-update-in-windows-10). This modification is not permanent, you can always turn on the automatic updates in your system, if you wish. Of course, if you turn on the automatic updates, the crappy drivers from Microsoft will be automatically installed too, deleting any other good drivers you installed previously.
3. Completely uninstall the automatically installed driver for the clickpad using the Device Manager (you can bring forward this Manager by right-clicking on the Start button). Restart the computer as required in a message box.
4. Install the previously downloaded driver from Synaptics. In my case, I did not need to install it manually, my system installed this driver “by default”, probably, as the only available driver for the clickpad on my hard drive.

These are the steps I went through to correct the problem. Now my clickpad is not as frustrating as it used to be. Be careful though when you try these steps, they might not work in your particular case, because your computer might have some important differences compared to my device.

[potty12]

I am just trying that out now, thanks a lot for taking the time to post. If it doesn't work, I will contact HP and threaten them with trading standards, as I purchased a computer that I have reasonable expectation that it will work perfectly (sale of goods act etc). If they fail to respond properly I shall reject the computer and take legal action to recover my outlay. I only bought it a couple of months ago so I shouldn't be experiencing these issues. 

[anasta5ia]

I would like to let you know that, quite unfortunately, the generic driver from the Synaptics website recently stopped working on my computer. This was expected, as explained on that website: "To ensure getting the appropriate driver for your device, download the Synaptics driver from your device manufacturer's support website. [...] Installing a generic driver may result in the loss of OEM-customized Synaptics pointing device functionality." Indeed, my customized settings started to go back to default values for no reason, and it was not possible to save them (this was not related to the issue described here: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-other_settings/windows-10-synaptics-touc... When I tried to reinstall the driver, although the installation seemed to be running, the driver could not be installed anymore. So, I installed a driver from the HP website (http://support.hp.com/ca-en/drivers#Z7_M0I02JG0KGVO00AUBO4GT60080). This driver is also crappy, the clickpad responds poorly to taps, and I get "script error" messages when I try to change settings. Just to let you know...

Good luck if you decide to take legal actions against HP. It's true that they have to provide functioning drivers for the hardware. But they just fail to do so.

[ross12]

Try rolling back the driver, i have the exact same problem, and i read to roll back the driver which i just did about an hour ago and it hasn't done it once yet,  i still need to test it over a few days, but so far so good. Also have a look at the following link to see where i found the information on this forum.

http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Software-and-How-To-Questions/touchpad-not-working-windows-10/...

[ross12]

i hid the touchpad driver updates after i rolledback the driver as described in other posts, and it is now functioning perfectly. Thanks for the information guys.