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Alienware laptop 18 mousepad freezing issue

Tags:
  • Laptops
  • Gaming
  • Touch Pad
  • Alienware
August 8, 2014 10:19:36 AM


Hello kind people of tom's Hardware. I recently bought an Alienware laptop (18) before i headed off for college and experienced no issues for the first 5 months. However within the last month I have been finding myself unable to use the mouse pad or mouse buttons at random times during games, a freeze. The led light stays on as if I am touching it, but it doesn't respond. It doesn't seem to happen during a specific game or after pressing a certain button. So far it has happened in CS;GO, BF4, BF3, Cod BO2, Cod MW2 and 3, and Minecraft (Mostly in BF4 however). It has never happened outside or a game and the problem persists even after closing the game via task manager and keyboard. There is a button that disables the mousepad using the FN key and F11 key, however this doesn't seem to do anything other than turn off the led light and will not respond further after that. The keyboard remains perfectly usable.

My system specs are as follows:

Spoiler


Processor
4th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-4710MQ processor (Quad Core, 6MB Cache, up to 3.5GHz w/ Turbo Boost)

Operating System
Windows 7 Home Premium, 64Bit, English

Display
18.4" WLED FHD (1920 X 1080) TrueLife Display

Video Card2
Dual NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 880M graphics with 16GB total (2x 8GB) GDDR5 - NVIDIA SLI® Enabled

Memory
16GB Dual Channel DDR3L at 1600MHz

Hard Drive
500GB (8GB Hybrid, 5400 RPM, 64MB Cache) SATA 6Gb/s w/NCQ

1Tb SATA (self added from old laptop into second slot)

Optical Drive
Slot-Loading 8x SuperMulti Drive (DVDR/RW) (Standard)


Wireless
802.11ac Dual Band 2x2 AC WiFi + Bluetooth 4.0

Primary Battery
8-cell Lithium Ion (86 wHr)

Ports, Slots & Chassis
AlienFX Lighting Zones
10 unique programmable zones with up to 20 distinct colors providing over 10 trillion lighting combinations

Dimensions & Starting weight
Height: Front: 2.23 in (56.71mm) Rear: 2.26 in (57.50mm)
Depth: 12.909 in (327.89 mm)
Width: 17.972 in (456.50 mm)
Starting at weight with optional SSD: 12.064 lbs. (5.472 kg.)

External Chassis Connections
(1x) Power/DC-in Jack
(1x) RJ-45 Gigabit Ethernet IPv6 (3x) SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Ports
(1x) SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Port with PowerShare Technology
(1x) Mini-Display Port
(1x) HDMI 1.4 Output / 1.3 Input
(1x) 7-in-1 Media Card Reader
(2x) Audio Out 1/8" Ports (One compatible with inline mic headset)
(1x) Line In Microphone 1/8" Port (retaskable for 5.1 analog audio output)
(1x) Kensington Security Lock port (cable and lock sold separately)

Exterior Chassis Materials
Anodized Aluminum
Magnesium Alloy

Keyboard
4-Zone, multi-color RGB, keyboard with AlienFX lighting controls and numeric keypad
9 user-programmable keys providing up to 19 distinct functions per application or game

Memory Slots
4x 204-Pin DDR3L SO-DIMM SDRAM Slots

Software
Alienware Command Center
AlienFX™
AlienTouch™
AlienFusion
AlienAdrenaline w/ Accelerator
Alienware TactX™

Touchpad
Backlit button image sensor trackpad with all-points addressable (APA)





Those specs are mostly copy and pasted from the Alienware page where I built the laptop; the only exception being the 1 tb Hard drive I installed in the second hard-drive slot below the original.

The drivers for the Touch-pad are updated as of 8/8/2014.

The programs I almost always have open while playing a game are:

Spoiler

Skype with a friend or two
Steam
Origin
maybe some music
Fraps
Rainmeter
Launchy
Fences
Avast
Alienware Fx
Nvidia experience
other essential background processes



I've looked all over the internet and can't find a problem similar to mine let alone a solution. I can't think of what would be causing it, I even cleaned out the fans thinking it might be over heating something (which wasn't the the problem :o  )

The only time I have ever messed around with the mouse settings was when I had to change some things to let me press keys and move the mouse simultaneously. I did try to enable both right and left mouse buttons to be pressed and registered at the same time, but never changed anything nor fixed that problem; free cookie to whomever helps me with that.

This is a really frustrating problem because I now am forced to randomly hard-shutdown (as-in holding the power button till it dies) my computer since using the commands in computer doesn't seem to work, even shut down and restart.

Thank you very much for reading and I hope you have a solution to my problem

Thanks,
FishPancakes

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