I’m not really looking for a fix here, although any suggestions would be good! More i’m really just curious why such a problem could occur, it seems most odd to me.
Anyway, basically the touch pad on my laptop works just fine when it’s on battery power. However, when plugged into the mains it’s very fussy about position. If i balance the thing on my lap it’s generally fine, but on a flat surface, pretty much dead to the touch. Just raising one corner of the laptop up even just 1 or 2 mm seems to make it much better. It’s just when it’s perfectly flat and powered by mains that it’s an issue.
Any thoughts?
Touchpads work by capacitance sensing. Sounds like there is enough stray AC leaking through your power supply to swamp the touchpad. You should make sure you have a good ground, or try a different power supply.
I’d sort of made a connection in my head between the two things but i’m still not sure why that is. Can you expand on this any? What causes the leak? Why would the laptop not being quite flat fix it?
Trying a different power supply isn’t really an option as those things are stupidly expensive and despite having 3 spares kicking around, none of them fit. It is a replacement i’m using though, come to think of it, this problem may have started when the original one broke.
How do i make sure i have a good ground?