n56vz Touchpad Erratic on AC Power

Hi,

The touchpad on my n56vz becomes erratic and impossible to use when the adapter is plugged in. When I unplug the adapter and just use battery power, the touchpad is immediately normal again. I can still use a mouse on both adapter and battery power.

I'm pretty sure that it's not a driver issue because I've tried multiple drivers. It even does the same thing when there's no driver installed. I'm using the OEM adapter that came with the laptop. Does anyone know of a solution? Is this a touchpad hardware problem or an adapter problem?

Thank you for any help.

 

Not sure if this is related, but I had an impossible time using my Microsoft wireless mouse until I disable the touch-pad (control panel in mouse settings) when the USB receiver was plugged into the laptop. If I want to use the touch-pad, I just pull out the USB receiver and it works fine (I did disable all the extra features of the touch-pad, but don't think that had any effect - stuff I never used anyway). I am not sure if the touchpad had the kind of issues yours does since I rarely use it. Now that I have to remove the USB receiver to get it to respond anyway, the touch pad seems fine.

My laptop is a different model - an N55-SM, but I had read a LOT of posts about how people were having the problem I had with the cursor jumping all over the page when using the mouse with all kinds of laptops - different brands, different models, etc (seemed to be a Microsoft OS issue since it was so wide-spread)

- Disabling the touchpad (when USB receiver is plugged in) eliminated all the problems completely. Whether or not this solution will work the other way around (cure problems with the touch pad rather than the mouse) -I don't know, but it's worth a try if you are using a wireless USB mouse. Obviously there is some kind of conflict - and an easy solution (at least for me).

Good luck,
R.

 

I don't know if Asus would have a solution for this. The problem is that the touchpad needs an stable ground power connection to operate. When you connect your laptop to AC power, if it is a bad quality one -for example, connected to a very crowded plug-, full of electric noise and such, the touchpad would go crazy.
There is a simple patch for your problem: touch a metallic part of your laptop when you are using the touchpad, you will notice that the erratic movement will fade away.

But that is a patch, not a solution. I don't know if I should send my laptop to Asus, as it is still under warranty, because I am not sure if they could be able to do something to avoid the bad behaviour of the touchpad. Maybe the solution would be to have a much stable ground on the power adapter.

 

Hmm... have you tried using driver sweeper, OP? And thereafter, manually install the driver through Device Manager, rather than the setup utility?

If it's the grounding issue as corneacraneo alluded to, then try another outlet (preferably a surge suppressor).

 

I actually just ran into this problem on my new Asus G46... when I plug the AC adapter into outlets on one particular circuit in my house, the touchpad acts terrible... jumpy, random clicks, etc. As soon as I unplug and go back to battery, the touchpad works perfect. It was driving me nuts and I tried all sorts of driver/software fixes and was about to return the laptop... but!

Turns out it was the electrical outlet. When I moved to a different circuit in the house, the problem went away completely. It's some sort of grounding issue as stated above. Try the AC adapter plugged into a different circuit or better yet a different building and I bet the problem goes away. It's exactly what corneacraneo said I'm betting.

Time to examine my outlets/wiring in my house it appears!

If it does it on all circuits and different locations then it sounds like an AC Adapter problem or internal laptop grounding issue that will require repair.