Notebook touchpad not working properly

[Rafry]

I have a brand new computer that I recently set up that turned out to have issues with the touchpad/clickpad mouse. When started, I had issues with the multitouch that failed intermittently. Particularly with web browsers such as google Chrome. What happens is after a while of use, the two finger scroll and pinch zooming stops working. If I switch to other programs, the multitouch may work there but not in Chrome. There are other problems with the touchpad but this was the initial problem I tried  to address as this considerable affects my workflow,

So what I did to try resolving the issue was to update all drivers, firmware and the operating system. I'm using the latest drivers from the HP support page, I also flashed the Synaptics Clickpad with the latest firmware and the BIOS as well. I also updated Windows 10 to build 2004 that was  released  back at the end of May. I also ran the hardware diagnostics tool without it showing any issues. I also read somewhere that some people have issues with the touchpad due to dated serial IO drivers. I made sure to have the latest serial drivers.

The multitouch still fails intermittently with chrome although the failures don't appear as frequently as before I conducted the updates. However, I have a much more serious problem with the touchpad that I have discovered. After having the computer on for about 20 hours: Let's say that I have used the computer for 5-6 hours, then I leave the computer without turning it off. Then the next day, I wake the computer up and log in through the lock screen. Then the touchpad becomes unresponsive. I'll describe in the next paragraph.

If I try to move the mouse pointer, I have to touch the pad for a few seconds before the pointer starts  to react to  my finger movements on the pad. If I remove the fingers from the pad and once again want to move the mouse cursor I have to get through this 2 second delay before I can interact with the mouse cursor. The same phenomenon exists also for multi-touch gestures.

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This is a serious issue for the touchpad which essentially renders it useless. The computer is brand new with almost no software installed. I have nothing connected to the computer except the power supply, using the latest drivers and have run all thinkable hardware diagnostics. How do I proceed and report this issue to the hardware department?

[Rafry]

I have now managed to reproduce the two second delay issue a couple of times now. It appears that as soon as the computer goes into stand-by and you log back in through the Windows lock screen the touchpad starts to have this behaviour. Don't think the computer has to be powered on for any long duration.

[Rafry]

I’ve made further discoveries regarding the touchpad issue and the 2 second delay. I think the issue with the driver is triggered by some of the software that I’m using; Atom text editor running in full-screen mode in one of my four virtual desktops. In detail, my first virtual desktop contains Chrome with many tabs. The second virtual desktop has a PowerShell prompt inside an app called “Windows Terminal” running in “acrylic mode”. The third virtual desktop has the Atom editor and the fourth has Microsoft Outlook.

In general, the Atom text editor doesn’t interact well with the multitouch gestures of the touchpad, nor the touchscreen. It is kind of odd because it works well with mouse scroll wheels and you can easily zoom by CRTL+rolling the wheel. This could be an issue with the text editor and its lacking support for multitouch gestures. The two-second lag however is an issue within the Synaptics driver itself as this is a global/systemic issue.

The Atom text editor is based on Electron, a framework based on the web-based frameworks node.js and Chromium that enables development of cross-platform applications. The issue is probably between Electron and the Synaptics driver and therefore is likely to affect far more programs than just Atom itself.

Edit: I have now managed to reproduce the issue without the Atom editor. It started this time after three days of use and a number of hibernation/wake-up cycles. The first thing that stopped working was the LTE/Cellphone module. It disappeared right after waking up from the first hibernation after a clean boot. I couldn't even find it in the device manager (Intel(R) XMM(TM) 7560 LTE-Advanced Pro ). It never came back during these three days until I restarted the system.