Touchscreen ghost touches - touches when I'm not touching the screen

[maxxvelocity]

Bought a Spectre x360 over the holidays and the laptop now is showing strange behavior as if something was clicked even when I'm not clicking.  It doesn't happen all the time, but once it starts, it does not stop.

First I thought it was the touchpad, so I disabled it, but the problem still persists.

So I went into the Windows 10 "Pen and Touch" settings and turn on the "Show visual feedback when touching the screen" and sure enough, it is showing some ghost touching is being done on the left top corner of the screen.

I don't think this is a hardware issue with the touch screen since the problem goes away if I restart the PC.  I also tried to boot to the BIOS's UEFI touchscreen test as soon as I see the problem, but the test does not register any touches on the screen even if I let it sit for the 160s duration of the test.

Anyone has similar issues or suggestions please help.  This is extremely annoying since it makes the laptop unusable once the problem surfaces.

Thanks

[Photoray002]

Hello Maxx,

I haven't heard of this issue with the X360 but I have heard of it before on other devices.

There could be several reasons why it happens. Here are a few suggestions you can try.

1. Make sure the screen is clean. Although there could be some debris caught between the screen and the digitizer which can cause phantom touches, especially if its always in the same spot.

2. Try recalibrating the touch screen and if no joy, try a Hard Reset of the system.

For a Hard Reset...While the battery is not easily removed like a conventional laptop, the X360 should still be accessible by removing the back and carefully disconnecting the cable without removing the battery. If you are not handy, skip this step.

HP Notebook PCs - Touch Screen Issues (Windows 10) | HP® Customer Support

3. If you suspect its software related, you can clean boot Windows which disables all non essential services. Then you can reactivate one service or program at a time until you find the one that's causing the issue.

How to Clean Boot Windows 10 and Windows 8

4. If non of these things help, contact HP Support directly for warranty issues. The digitizer or such could possibly be bad.  Contact HP Worldwide | HP® Official Site

Let me know what you find.

[DylanC]

Hello,

I recently purchased a Spectre x360 (i5-6200U, FHD, Win10) and the problem you are describing manifested itself after an hour or so of use. The visual feedback was turned on from the beginning and I can confirm that the ghost touches occur in the upper left region of the screen, if not the very corner itself. When it happens it renders the rest of the machine useless. The only way I have managed to make it stop is to close the lid and force the device to sleep. I cannot force it to reboot as the continous ghost touching will remove the cursor instantly from wherever I want it to be and thus it it impossible to venture into any of the menus. After two days of use I think the problem has occurred four times. Not very frequently perhaps, but nevertheless significant enough and quite a sad flaw in a machine that cost me almost 1.300 euros. (I will return it of course).

I do however not think you and I have gotten bad units, I am quite sure there must be more people affected by this. To me it is obvious that HP and their contract partners (Intel, Microsoft and whatnot) have not worked hard enough on the display driver. This problem occured with the driver that was preinstalled on the device and the driver itself also crashed on numerous occasions. After updating the driver (with the one provided by HP through their support assistant) the problem persisted, as did the actual driver crashes. I have seen dozens of post on the Spectre x360 where people complain about the display driver crashing on a daily basis. The only explanation for these constant and numerous crashes? The driver is poorly made. I upgraded from my old laptop mainly because I was sick and tired of the Intel video driver constantly crashing whenever I wanted to view video content. I bought that unit used and I could not return it and Intel or Asus never updated the driver during the lifespan of the device. That is sadly how these mega corporations roll. When they have gotten your doe, their job is done and they don't care anymore.

Anyway, what I want to say, among other things, is that the problem you and I are seeing is surely a software issue that could easily be fixed if HP and Intel put some energy to it. Don't hold your breath they will though.

Other problems with the Spectre x360 that affects every machine sold and that should make anybody who bought it to think seriously about claiming a refund if HP does not fix this swiftly:

*The touchpad driver is poorly made: Any changes to the settings will revert back to default on reboot, rendering the idea of beeing able to adjust the touchpad - an interesting feature that has been around for some 15 years - completely useless. Yes, I know there is a registry hack that will fix this (not provided by HP or Intel), but it MUST work out of the box on a machine this expensive.  Also, it is not possible to set the two finger scrolling to not be inverted. There is a checkbox for this, but it has no effect. To change the action for four finger click also has no effect.

*HP has purpously removed the ability to see the estimated battery run time in Windows. They claim they have done so because they view this feature as useless and inaccurate and that they fear it could be misleading. I and many many others would say it is indeed a very useful feature that at least gives you a hint of the amount of time you have left and that removing it seriously compromises the control you want to have over your device. One cannot help wondering if this is not HPs way of dealing with the many complaints they have recieved about the battery runtime not living up to the very lavish claims they made in their advertising campaign.

My unit is also suffering from these often mentioned construction flaws:
*Rattling touchpad.
*The part of the back panel where there is some text printed is somewhat loose and moves and makes a rattling sound whenever the unit is picked up.
*Some keys are mushy and sort of feels worn out out of the box.
*The hinges feels like they will give up much sooner than I would want them to.

[danny-r]

@DylanC

I have brought your issue to the attention of an appropriate team within HP. They will likely request information from you in order to look up your case details or product serial number. Please look for a private message from an identified HP contact. Additionally, keep in mind not to publicly post personal information (serial numbers and case details).

If you are unfamiliar with how the Forum's private message capability works, you can learn about that here.

Thank you for visiting the HP Support Forum.

[maxxvelocity]

Dylan - I agree.  Between Intel & HP, I can't believe the two biggest companies can't get their act together and fix the display driver crashes.  I mean c'mon, this laptop and Win10 been out for a while now.

My ghost touches are still happenning, albeit not as much as it used to.  And I still believe it's a software/driver issue because a reboot always fixes it.

My laptop also has an issue of being slow periodically, where the touches or user interface is not very responsive.  I have an i7 CPU, and CPU usage isn't high.  This may be just a Win10 issue.

For something this expensive, the experience so far with it and Windows10 was definitely subpar 😞

[vukisz]

I am experiencing same issue. Hp spectre 13-4106na.

Those ghost random touches by iteslef happens in same spot lower left corner where task view button is located. It happened ~5 times in two weeks. When this is happening laptop cannot be used, as it is occupied by fast clicking that corner.

Fliping to tablet/laptop modes seems to remove this behavior. 

Last time laptop was not in use and display was off. When it started happening display turned on and that annoying corner click took ~1 minute and then went out by itself without touching laptop.

I have a bad feeling that this could be hardware realted issue. Next time I will record a video of this happening. As this happens totaly randomly. 

[vukisz]

Happened again. This time I have this on video.

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmTBiUuBrI4

Now changing laptop to tablet didn't help. Sleep and resume helped

[Photoray002]

Thanks for posting the video vukisz.

From what I can tell by scouring the internet for phantom touchscreen issues on various equipment, it all points to a faulty digitizer or electrical shorts in various areas inside the housing.

One such Youtuber found a work around by taping various point inside his tablet to insulate the digitizer cable and other electrical contact points.

I read on the Lenovo forum about the same issue one guy had. The only fix was replacing the digitizer and cable.

Either way, I don't see this as a software or firmware issue as the one guy pointed out above.

If you are under warranty still, you need to contact HP Support directly for repair or replacement as I stated in the beginning.

Good luck.

[csavage7]

I bought a new SPectre x360 a month ago and experienced this persistent false touches on one spot on the screen issue for the first time today. rebooted and it is fine now, but has this been a recurring issue for anyone else? Does it indeed require the whole unit to be swapped out?

[vukisz]

It was recurring for me. Sometimes it happens every day sometimes there are days without any issues.  I'v got RMA exhange and on a new device I am not facing these issues so far