Touchpad bug

[Gail Gurman]

I am using WinXP on an HP Pavilion notebook, which includes a Synaptics
PS/2 Touchpad. One of the features of the touchpad is a scrolling area on
the right side. Touching the pad there and sliding my finger up or down
causes the current window to scroll (if applicable).

In OneNote (SP1), this doesn't work very smoothly when it works (the mouse
cursor jumps to the scrollbar and back), but worse than that, it can cause
scrolling to "crash": The scroll bar widget disappears, as well as the up
and down arrows. The only way to move up the page up and down is with arrow
keys. Exiting and restarting OneNote brings back scrolling.

I don't have this problem with either of two different mice I use, and I
don't have a problem with touchpad scrolling in any other program.

I searched the knowledge base and the closest thing I found was an article
about using the Synaptics touchpad on an HP Omnibook running Win2k doesn't
work with OneNote. This doesn't seem to be close enough to my situation to
apply. Also, I tried updating the touchpad driver but it seems to be up-to-
date.

 

[Micah Brodsky]

I have experienced a somewhat similar-sounding bug with OneNote on a Gateway
tablet convertible, also using its Synaptics touchpad. Scrolling with the
scroller area rarely works in OneNote (although I think Synaptics just did a
really lousy job on the scroller), but worse, it would sometimes cause the
entire note area (not the tabs) to jump around within the larger OneNote
window as though it were an ordinary floating window. Subsequent attempts at
using the scrollbar would then simply move the note area around. Yes, very
very odd. Restarting OneNote was necessary. Fortunately, I have not seen
this problem in a while, it just stopped randomly appearing. I was using
OneNote RTM and XP SP1 at the time this was frequently happening.

(incidentally, if anyone can suggest a workaround for the intrinsic
shabbiness of the Synaptics scroller code, I would be most grateful.)

--Micah Brodsky

 

[Chris H.]

Are you running the "stock" drivers furnished with the Tablet PC, or have
you checked with the Gateway web site to see if there are newer drivers for
the Touchpad available? If you haven't already you might try drivers
directly from Synaptics: http://www.synaptics.com/support/drive.cfm
Remember, since Tablet PCs run the Windows XP Pro operating system you can
always use the Roll Back Driver feature in Device Manager in case there is
no correction or the new drivers simply don't work.
--
Chris H.
Microsoft Windows MVP/Tablet PC
Tablet Creations - http://nicecreations.us/
Associate Expert
Expert Zone -