I recently purchased a laptop from Microsoft (2015 Dell XPS 13") that uses the Microsoft Precision Touchpad. There are a few issues I'm having with this touchpad that I've never noticed with other laptops and I'm wondering if anyone else is experiencing these or if there are any fixes. There is a noticeable delay when trying to make slow light movements. My finger can move several millimeters before the cursor responds. It may not sound like much, but if you're trying to make subtle movements in photoshop, or select a specific character anywhere it's very noticeable and difficult to use. The majority of the time when I lift my finger the cursor will jump several pixels, often moving away from the object I'm trying to target. If you use any browser besides IE, two finger scrolling is very choppy and has a similar delay that's experienced in the first issue. There are a few other minor annoyances, like poor palm detection and using two hands (one to move the cursor and one to click with) but the issues above are the biggest annoyances, ordered by most annoying to least. If anyone has any ways to fix these issues or install different drivers, I'd love to hear about them. Thanks!

Bill is right, and this is happening on a Samsung Notebook 9 Pro with precision touchpad. There are large amounts of movement before you get out of what I dub "horizontal" or "vertical scroll lockout". In addition, precision touchpads don't send wheel events or gesture events on Edge. This appears to be a known bug for over two years. I was even at Microsoft 5 years ago, when they were pushing high-precision touchpads for Windows 8.1 to compete with Apple. It really doesn't help if Microsoft never finished the software side of things and doesn't respond to the numerous complaints lodged. Before this machine I got burned with an HP Envy which had "the worst touchpad" in Microsoft's numerous tests. These have left me with two nearly unusable machines for doing creative work. The HP Envy was also taken out by the Windows 10 Upgrade in one of the early updates. Just couldn't boot anymore. Here is a fiddle with all of the numerous problems on Windows with the precision touchpad. Try to get pan/pinch/zoom (ctrl+wheel) to work in browser app. You'll see Bill's mentioned issue, and a host of other problems. This has gone on far too long. https://jsfiddle.net/alecazam/my6gntrr/ I tried disabling the driver Bill mentioned, but when I restarted, then it was re-enabled. I'm leery about uninstalling it, but would like to see the behavior without Microsoft's erroneous driver in the way. I contacted Samsung support already, and they have no clue how to workaround this. They recommended a reinstall of Windows. That's not the solution.

On chrome, if you go to chrome://flags/ and disable smooth scrolling, it will actually get smoother.

So has anyone seen any improvement in the Windows 10 Anniversary update? It replaced my Synaptics driver so I'm about to reinstall....

"not very precise" is an understatement, it's literally the least precise, worst touchpad I've ever used in my entire life. I just bought a new 1,000$+ Dell Inspiron 7559 laptop and it's having this same issue, it says it has a precision touchpad. I tried installing every random driver I could find but I couldn't fix it. So, everyone has this problem? How are people giving these touchpads passing reviews? It's unbelievably terrible I guess I'll just have to use a mouse until this is maybe fixed in a few years? :(

I cannot believe the level of apathy from MS reps in this post. This is a basic troubleshooting step: Confirm if the issue persists across multiple devices. It has been confirmed multiple times from various users in this thread alone, and I will add to the pile: I have an MSI CX61 2QC and I have this same issue. I used to have an HP Pavillion 9009US running windows XP and the issue was there. I had installed both the MS drivers and the Synaptic drivers. Anyone who has tried to Google the issue will know that it manifests in versions of Windows since (at the very least) XP, through 7 and 8, and up to the current version, and across many, many platforms, including Microsoft's own hardware (unless you somehow, ridiculously, attempt to claim that the Surface isn't a Microsoft product). It is 100% a Microsoft issue, as it is something which has manifested across multiple models of computers and across differing versions of Windows. This is Troubleshooting 101. Stop passing the buck. Seriously, you reps are the worst; arguing with customers, and basically giving the rep's version of f-off ("It's someone else's problem; call them.) to anyone asking for help, not even providing some basic troubleshooting or workarounds, even if they're partial fixes. You remind me of the guy from "A Week in the Life of a Lotus Notes Support Person from H**l". The least you could do is reply, "We understand your frustration. What I can do for you is send this issue up the line. It seems as though it may be relevant considering it is an issue that many people seem to be having, and our engineers should be made aware if they are not already." Even if you've already logged the issue 10 times today already. It's basic customer service. Apple's tech support is way better. It's too bad they don't write Windows.

Microsoft Precision Touchpad, not very precise

Anonymous

I recently purchased a laptop from Microsoft (2015 Dell XPS 13") that uses the Microsoft Precision Touchpad.

There are a few issues I'm having with this touchpad that I've never noticed with other laptops and I'm wondering if anyone else is experiencing these or if there are any fixes.

There is a noticeable delay when trying to make slow light movements. My finger can move several millimeters before the cursor responds. It may not sound like much, but if you're trying to make subtle movements in photoshop, or select a specific character anywhere it's very noticeable and difficult to use.
The majority of the time when I lift my finger the cursor will jump several pixels, often moving away from the object I'm trying to target.
If you use any browser besides IE, two finger scrolling is very choppy and has a similar delay that's experienced in the first issue.

There are a few other minor annoyances, like poor palm detection and using two hands (one to move the cursor and one to click with) but the issues above are the biggest annoyances, ordered by most annoying to least.

If anyone has any ways to fix these issues or install different drivers, I'd love to hear about them.

Thanks!

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Anonymous

2017-04-22T05:31:27+00:00

Bill is right, and this is happening on a Samsung Notebook 9 Pro with precision touchpad. There are large amounts of movement before you get out of what I dub "horizontal" or "vertical scroll lockout".

In addition, precision touchpads don't send wheel events or gesture events on Edge. This appears to be a known bug for over two years. I was even at Microsoft 5 years ago, when they were pushing high-precision touchpads for Windows 8.1 to compete with Apple. It really doesn't help if Microsoft never finished the software side of things and doesn't respond to the numerous complaints lodged.

Before this machine I got burned with an HP Envy which had "the worst touchpad" in Microsoft's numerous tests. These have left me with two nearly unusable machines for doing creative work. The HP Envy was also taken out by the Windows 10 Upgrade in one of the early updates. Just couldn't boot anymore.

Here is a fiddle with all of the numerous problems on Windows with the precision touchpad. Try to get pan/pinch/zoom (ctrl+wheel) to work in browser app. You'll see Bill's mentioned issue, and a host of other problems. This has gone on far too long.

https://jsfiddle.net/alecazam/my6gntrr/

I tried disabling the driver Bill mentioned, but when I restarted, then it was re-enabled. I'm leery about uninstalling it, but would like to see the behavior without Microsoft's erroneous driver in the way.

I contacted Samsung support already, and they have no clue how to workaround this. They recommended a reinstall of Windows. That's not the solution.
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Anonymous

2017-03-18T02:00:27+00:00

On chrome, if you go to chrome://flags/ and disable smooth scrolling, it will actually get smoother.
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Anonymous

2016-08-11T02:11:06+00:00

So has anyone seen any improvement in the Windows 10 Anniversary update?

It replaced my Synaptics driver so I'm about to reinstall....
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Anonymous

2016-07-20T23:24:08+00:00

"not very precise" is an understatement, it's literally the least precise, worst touchpad I've ever used in my entire life.

I just bought a new 1,000$+ Dell Inspiron 7559 laptop and it's having this same issue, it says it has a precision touchpad.

I tried installing every random driver I could find but I couldn't fix it.

So, everyone has this problem? How are people giving these touchpads passing reviews? It's unbelievably terrible

I guess I'll just have to use a mouse until this is maybe fixed in a few years? :(
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Anonymous

2016-06-18T21:15:26+00:00

I cannot believe the level of apathy from MS reps in this post. This is a basic troubleshooting step: Confirm if the issue persists across multiple devices.

It has been confirmed multiple times from various users in this thread alone, and I will add to the pile:

I have an MSI CX61 2QC and I have this same issue. I used to have an HP Pavillion 9009US running windows XP and the issue was there. I had installed both the MS drivers and the Synaptic drivers. Anyone who has tried to Google the issue will know that it manifests in versions of Windows since (at the very least) XP, through 7 and 8, and up to the current version, and across many, many platforms, including Microsoft's own hardware (unless you somehow, ridiculously, attempt to claim that the Surface isn't a Microsoft product).

It is 100% a Microsoft issue, as it is something which has manifested across multiple models of computers and across differing versions of Windows. This is Troubleshooting 101. Stop passing the buck.

Seriously, you reps are the worst; arguing with customers, and basically giving the rep's version of f-off ("It's someone else's problem; call them.) to anyone asking for help, not even providing some basic troubleshooting or workarounds, even if they're partial fixes. You remind me of the guy from "A Week in the Life of a Lotus Notes Support Person from H**l".

The least you could do is reply, "We understand your frustration. What I can do for you is send this issue up the line. It seems as though it may be relevant considering it is an issue that many people seem to be having, and our engineers should be made aware if they are not already." Even if you've already logged the issue 10 times today already. It's basic customer service.

Apple's tech support is way better. It's too bad they don't write Windows.
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