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Touchpad clicking not working

Anonymous
2020-10-15T00:23:53+00:00

Hello,

Parts of my Surface Laptop 3's touchpad occasionally don't recognize left clicking without the use of a lot of force. The issue seems to be limited to the lower left quadrant (where one would normally want to left-click), but does appear to occur sporadically in the center of the touchpad as well.

The only steps I have taken so far to solve it were to complete the pending quality updates and to uninstall and restart the HID-compliant mouse driver (the only driver that shows up under "Mice and other pointing devices" in Device Manager).

Is this a software issue? If so, what steps can I take to solve it? I'm hoping it's not a hardware issue - I don't want to have to bring the laptop in to a store.

Please let me know if you need more info. Thanks in advance for your help.

Surface | Surface Laptop | Install and update

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  1. Anonymous
    2020-10-17T01:16:09+00:00

    Hi AV416, 

    Thank you for reaching Microsoft Community. 

    Please follow these steps to troubleshoot the issue on your touchpad: 

    1: Force Shutdown

                                   Press and hold the Power button for 20 seconds

    2: Run Surface Diagnostic Toolkit and check Windows Update

    3: Update drivers and firmware

                                   Check what is the current OS Build of your Windows version by going to Settings > System > About. 

                                   Go to Download driver and firmware for Surface, choose Surface Laptop 3 then click Download on the next page.

                                   Choose the .msi file that matches your current OS Build and click Next.

                                   After downloading, run and install the .msi then Restart. 

    4: Check Settings

                                   Go to Windows Settings> Devices > Touchpad and select Reset

                                   Try also adjusting the touchpad sensitivity

    5: Verify in UEFI

                                   Boot the device to its UEFI screen and check if the issue also occurs on that screen

                                   See this page for the steps on How to get to the UEFI settings

                                   After testing, just choose Exit > Restart now

    If the issue also occurs on the UEFI screen, this is likely a hardware issue already. Please contact support through our Global Customer Service phone numbers for assistance in getting the device replaced. 

    If the touchpad works perfectly on the UEFI screen, this could just be due to a software on the device. I suggest that you proceed in re-installing Windows on the device using a USB Recovery Image. This option will reimage the entire device and reload Windows including the drivers and firmware. It is the most complete form of Reset and it will wipe out everything on the device so you might need to back up your files first. You will need also a 16GB/32GB of flash drive that must be formatted into FAT32 prior to downloading the Recovery Image. If you like to try, you can follow the steps provided below:

    How to Download, Create and Use a USB recovery drive

    To download the Recovery Image:

    • You'll need a PC running Windows 7 or later or Surface Device.
    1. Visit the page to Download the recovery image for your Surface
    2. Sign in with your Microsoft Account
    3. From the list of Surface devices available, select the device that you need a recovery image for

    Please note that while you will only be presented with devices that are currently registered on your account, you will also be presented with the option to get an image for a different type of device. If you try to use this option, you will be prompted to enter the serial number for that device 4. Download the recovery image using the button on the page 5. When the download bar pops up at the bottom of your screen, save the file in a location you will be able to find it.

     Format USB Drive:

    • Note: Formatting a recovery drive will erase anything that is already stored on your USB drive. Make sure to transfer any important data from your USB drive to another storage device before using it to create a Surface USB recovery drive.
    1. Insert your USB drive into the USB port of your PC.
    2. From the desktop, open File Explorer
    3. Tap and hold or right-click on the USB drive and choose Format
    4. Select FAT32 as the file system and enter a Volume label to name the USB drive, such as RECOVERY, and then tap or click Start
    5. Tap or click OK to erase the contents of the USB drive
    6. Tap or click OK when the format is complete

    Create a recovery drive:

    1. On your Surface or PC, open recovery image that you downloaded by double-clicking it or right click then select Extract and then Extract all.
    2. Select the USB drive you formatted earlier for the location and click Extract.

    Use a USB recovery drive to reset your Surface:

    1. Shutdown the Surface
    2. Insert the USB recovery drive into the USB port
    3. Press and hold the volume-down (-) rocker
    4. Press and release the power button
    5. When the Surface logo appears, release the volume-down (-) rocker
    6. Surface will start the recovery software on the USB recovery drive
    7. When prompted, choose your language options and keyboard layout
    8. Select Troubleshoot
    9. Select Recover from a Drive. Choose Remove Everything and Fully Clean the Drive. Recovering this PC.
    10. If prompted, select Repartition the drives
    11. If prompted for BitLocker Key, tap Skip this Drive

    Hope this helps.

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