Thinkpads Forum

I have a T420 in which the touchpad/trackpoint have stopped working. The laptop was a refurb, new to me 2 weeks ago. Touchpad worked out of the box but failed within a few hours. Reinstalled the driver and it resumed working. After a day or so? (I was using a mouse by that time so I'm not sure when it died) it stopped working again. I've tried reinstalling the driver but that didn't do it.

In device manager it shows up (although I have to select show hidden devices) but in device status it says "this device is not present, is not working properly, or does not have all of it's drivers installed (code 24)".

If I uninstall the driver and the utility, then clean the registry, delete the two folders in C:drivers for the driver and utilities and delete the c:\program files\synaptics folder, then reboot the drivers are reinstalled automatically (how it knows where the driver is I don't know since I removed what I thought were all traces from the laptop), but the result in device manager is the same.

I'd suspect the touchpad is shot but why does it find it on reboot? I downloaded the driver and utilities from lenovo but there seem to be two different versions of the driver (16.0 & 16.2). I've tried them both.

Anybody have any suggestions, short of returning the laptop for repair/replacement? It's my work machine with a couple of days effort into it setting it up that I'd like to avoid losing if I return or replace it.

Welcome to the forum.

What's the 7-char. TYPE on the bottom of the laptop?
Which OS are you running?
If W10, many drivers are probably missing or not working properly...

win 7 pro, 64
type 4180-AP3

Thanks for taking a look

I've got a similar issue. The touchpad will stop working if I squeeze the case near the touchpad, and resume working if I restart, or suspend and resume the OS. I can also revive the touchpad in OSes where I can fully unload and reload the drivers without restarting. Something in the hardware must cause the drivers to hang. I don't know the history as this laptop came from a recycler. There is similar behaviour in most operating systems aside from some older linux environments where it works again a few seconds after giving it a squeeze. It only takes light pressure... like picking up the laptop from the front.

N.B: You could also try using "sleep and resume" in the meantime instead of restarting - works for me in windows 10.

Am replacing all the front touchpad hardware with spares (£10/~$14) - I'll let you know how this goes (when I get around to it) and if I am wrong about it being a hardware issue.

arekusanda wrote:I've got a similar issue. The touchpad will stop working if I squeeze the case near the touchpad, and resume working if I restart, or suspend and resume the OS.

Is it correct to assume that you've pulled the palmrest and re-seated the ribbon connector for the touchpad?

Seems to be solved for now. I was in Control panel-mouse and it recognized an issue, I allowed it to uninstall the driver and reboot, and it again resumed working. Must be a driver issue after all. With any luck it won't fail again. We'll see

forda wrote:Seems to be solved for now. I was in Control panel-mouse and it recognized an issue, I allowed it to uninstall the driver and reboot, and it again resumed working. Must be a driver issue after all. With any luck it won't fail again. We'll see

well that didn't last long. closed lid on the laptop after working for several hours, reopened a while later, touchpad has failed again. sure feels like a driver issue not a hardware issue. tried to repeat the sequence above but it didn't work this time.

Any thought would be appreciated.