Problems with touchpad and keyboard gestures in my HP Pavillion 15 au114TX.

[I_am_Groot]

There are multiple touchpad and keyboard issues in my notebook (HP Pavillion 15-au114Tx with windows 10 pre-installed). I've bought my PC back in march 2017 and it's been working fine until a few months back when I started experiencing some issues with my touchpad and keyboard gestures. It is to be noted that all these issues will keep occurring and then suddenly disappear together as if everything has gotten normal and then reappear again, and the cycle repeats itself. I'll mention the issues pointwise :-

1. The two finger scrolling gesture in my touchpad stops working and I have to use the scroll bars on the screen to navigate through the page. It starts working again but only for a short time and then same thing happens. This issue remains for the most time while the other two below are not that frequent.

2. Single tap (right click) misbehaves in a different way. Let's say I'm clicking on the windows icon to open the startup menu. Startup menu would appear on my screen but would collapse (disappear or closes down) automatically. This happens with other icons too, they would either not respond or the dialog box that appear would collapse. Sometimes the single click would entirely stop working. Same is with the double finger tap, or the three finger or four finger gestures. The action occurs and then folds back on itself. Even if I press the windows key on my keyboard the screen would collapse. However, when I keep the Ctrl key pressed and then try to use the touchpad gestures, they start working fine (scrolling still doesn't work).

3. Alt+tab gesture on my keyboard also behaves similarly. The switching gesture appears on the screen  but then collapses and nothing happens.

These issues occur together and disappear together. Note that when I use an external mouse scrolling works fine but other other issues are still there and so It's not clear whether it's a hardware problem or not. I have reset the windows once, deleting everything but the problems persisted. It will be really helpful if someone can help me resolve this.

[asmita6658]

Hi @I_am_Groot

Welcome to the HP Support Community. I'd be happy to assist you with the touchpad issue. 

Let's try these steps -

1) Right click on the start or Windows icon and open the "Device Manager".
2) Expand the "Mice and other pointing devices".
3) Right click TouchPad and then click on uninstall and restart the computer. 
 

Update the computer using these steps - 

Step 1 Windows Updates - 
1) In the search box, type and open Windows Updates. 
2) Check for updates. 
3) If the updates are available, click on install and restart the computer. 

Step 2 HP Support Assistant Updates - 
1) In the search box, type and open HP Support Assistant. 
2) Check for updates. 
3) If the updates are available, click on install and restart the computer. 

You may also refer to this document - HP Notebook PCs - Using the TouchPad or ClickPad 

Hope this helps! Keep me posted. 

Please click “Accept as Solution” if you feel my post solved your issue, it will help others find the solution.

Click the “Kudos, Thumbs Up" on the bottom right to say “Thanks” for helping!

Have a great day! 

[I_am_Groot]

Hello! Thanks for replying. I have tried the step suggested by you but none of them worked. My windows is up to date and there are no major updates via HP support assistant also. I have also tried uninstalling the the synaptic touchpad drivers which only resulted in losing all gesture functionality. Thus I am reinstalling the touchpad driver from HP devices and drivers section.

I'm not sure whether the issue with my PC is related to hardware or software. I have also observed random flickering of the screen of my laptop (screen completely gets black and flickers). It appears that the right click action happens even without me physically clicking the touchpad. Other issues are described in my original post. This is quite a complicated problem since a lot of things are happening and I think I really need personal assistance. Are there any other solutions apart from those that you suggested in your answer??

[asmita6658]

Hi @I_am_Groot

Appreciate you trying the steps. 

To isolate the issue, I'd suggest we try testing the hardware - 

1. Hold the power button for at least five seconds to turn off the computer.
2. Turn on the computer and immediately press Esc repeatedly, about once every second. When the menu appears, press the F2 key.
3. On the HP PC Hardware Diagnostics (UEFI) main menu, click System Tests.
4. Click Extensive Test.

If the hardware is fine, back-up the data and try re-installing the operating system - 

1. Shutdown the computer. 
2. Turn the computer back on again and repeatedly tap on the ESC until a Startup menu appears. 
3. Press F11 once for System Recovery. 
4. Choose the Keyboard Layout. 
5. Click on Troubleshoot. 
6. Go to Recovery Manager and click on System Recovery. 
Note : Back-up all your data as System Recovery will delete everything that you had saved or installed on the computer. 
 

Let me know how that pans out 🙂