Dell e6400 intermittent touchpad failure

Just got a Dell Latitude e6400 from the outlet. Mostly so far so good, but I've noticed that under Ubuntu (and Arch) Linux the touchpad exhibits behavior which ranges from slowdown to outright failure.

About two minutes after booting, I experience one of the following:
- Everything's fine
- Touchpad runs at 1/3 speed, but works
- Touchpad is completely unresponsive, but trackpoint works
- Both touchpad and trackpoint are completely unresponsive

On occasion the touchpad and trackpoint are completely unresponsive from the start. In every case an external USB mouse has no problem.

Under Windows it is mostly fine, though I notice that the trackpoint goes unresponsive for several seconds sometimes. Dell tech support ran me through diagnostics/driver reinstall, and declined to help me with any Linux-related problems.

Any ideas? I'm about to hope this is a QC issue with the hardware and ask for another one before my 21-day refund period is up -- kind of overkill but don't want to risk getting stuck with something that can only run Windows properly.

 

It's likely that this is NOT a hardware issue. Problems with the touchpad on the e6400 under linux have been reported extensively.

NBR Linux forum thread
Arch Linux Users forum thread
Ubuntu Users forum thread
Ubuntu first bug report
Ubuntu second bug report

The net of this seems to be that apparently there was a kernel patch submitted to address these issues. So the easiest way to fix this, might be to run the most up to date kernel you can. (as opposed to patching the kernel yourself)

Good Luck.

 

Thanks for your reply - I'd tried that patch and one mentioned inside the second bug report to no effect. Was a hardware issue after all.

The touchpad died entirely the other day -- Linux, Windows, diagnostics utility. Swapped with a replacement part and the touchpad is good again.