Synaptic driver spooks with Dell Precision M6600 touchpad.

Question

I'm lost for words on this one, meaning I'm not quite sure how to best describe this or title the problem.
But for lack of words I recorded the odd issue: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JXaUnWA1Rk
In short what's happening is whenever i try to move the mouse on the X axis, it usually just picks up the slight Y axis movements and the burst all of the X movements right as "one input" making the cursor jump to the right edge of the screen.
And sometimes it moves slightly to the left and right when i fiddle on the touchpad as if it were locked within 20 pixels and then after a second or so of fiddling it "Unlocks" and i can move it as per normal.
So fiddling a bit "unlocks" it and i can use it as per normal, until i lift the finger.. then i have to re-do it again. Any ideas?
(Plugging in a external mouse works, but i'm traveling constantly and every now and then i'm only away for a day or so and i skip the external mouse.. or i just forget to pack it..)
Sysinfo:
[torxed@archie ~]$ xinput
⎡ Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)]
⎜ ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ DualPoint Stick id=11 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ AlpsPS/2 ALPS DualPoint TouchPad id=12 [slave pointer (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard id=3 [master keyboard (2)]
↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard id=5 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Power Button id=6 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Video Bus id=7 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Power Button id=8 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Sleep Button id=9 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard id=10 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Dell WMI hotkeys id=13 [slave keyboard (3)]
[torxed@archie ~]$ cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf
Section "InputClass"
Identifier "touchpad catchall"
Driver "synaptics"
MatchIsTouchpad "on"
Option "TapButton1" "1"
Option "TapButton2" "2"
Option "TapButton3" "3"
MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
EndSection
Section "InputClass"
Identifier "touchpad ignore duplicates"
MatchIsTouchpad "on"
MatchOS "Linux"
MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/mouse*"
Option "Ignore" "on"
EndSection
Section "InputClass"
Identifier "Default clickpad buttons"
MatchDriver "synaptics"
Option "SoftButtonAreas" "50% 0 82% 0 0 0 0 0"
EndSection
Section "InputClass"
Identifier "Disable clickpad buttons on Apple touchpads"
MatchProduct "Apple|bcm5974"
MatchDriver "synaptics"
Option "SoftButtonAreas" "0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0"
EndSection
Last edited by Torxed (2013-10-08 19:26:32)

Answer 1

Try to boot with a live CD/DVD system and see if you don't have a hardware issue.
If the machine worked for a couple of days and if it works sometimes, that seems a hardware problem to me.
Last edited by berbae (2014-05-03 08:40:22)