New ES-512 machine, touchpad & clicker quit working

Greetings all. Bought an Acer E 15 ES1-512-c88m first of December. Barely got 12-20 hours of use out of it. Worked fine for 3 weeks and then all of the sudden last night I opened the lid after sitting idle plugged in for 20 hours and immediately the touchpad began acting like I was trying to highlight, drag, or draw boxes around things continuously - when all I was trying to do was move he cursor. At first I assumed it was cold or confused. Shutdowns, restarts, HID driver reinstalls did nothing. After a hour or two of troubleshooting the touchpad performance worsened, to where at this point NO clicks of taps of any kind will work, so I can't pick or select anything - and am forced to navigate menus and options by keyboard - many of which I can't get to. Final result: all I can do now with the touchpad is move the cursor around, but nothing else. The clicker is mechanically free and never stuck.

I'm disappointed because my older Acer 10" D255 from 2011 has never had any issues.

Sadly the only impression I'm getting is that the circuitry for the "click" function either shorted or has somehow gone "out of spec" or "out of cal". There is no way to even find out what kind of touchpad it is, because it's not listed on any data sheets.

I'm guessing the best thing to do is get it replaced free of charge because it is practically new, but I wondered if there may be any other solutions with less hassle. Who would do this - Acer or NewEgg (where I got it from)? Thanks.

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philetus

Use this to get the driver out of recovery and reinstall it.

http://acer--uk.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/26946/~/reinstall-drivers-or-applications-with-acer-recovery-management

Or do a complete Recovery.

http://acer--uk.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/29925/~/use-acer-erecovery-management-to-restore-your-system-or-create-recovery-media

Ironman0737

Um, what driver would I need from the list? It is a very short list and it doesn't appear that there's anything that pertains to a touchpad.

In the meantime, in my garage I was able to find my old MS optical mouse from 2001 and I'm actually able to use the machine enough to attempt a real troubleshoot. Please keep any suggestions rolling in. I will also be in contact with Acer shortly...

Ironman0737

OK now I've discovered that the Synaptics ClickPad is not regognized as such on new machines. It's only recognized as a universal input device as part of the latest I2C HID driver protocol. I looked this up on both Synaptics and Microsoft websites.

Yet, the latest I2C HID driver shown on my machine is 6/21/06. Is there a newer one I could try and if so, where would I find it? And how?

philetus

Go to services and see if hidi2c service is started.

Ironman0737

Task Manager is open. I have all the services listed alphabetically and there is NO service in the list by that name.

Also, I just chatted online with Acer tech support and the guy said to perform a Refresh in the Recovery area. I agreed, knowing that it would wipe out all my preloaded and Acer apps. Upon restart, the Refresh made it 15% in when it encountered a blue screen saying there was an error and could not proceed and that any changes would be undone.

Up to this point: fail, so far.

Ironman0737

Updates from today. Made 3 different calls to Acer support.

Call #1:

Described my problem,, told them I was 99% sure I had a defective clicker circuitry in my touchpad. I told them I tried the system Refresh option to no avail. So Acer cust rep tells me the next step was a full system Reset with file deletion. Went to do that, the machine restarted. Then the reset process went to 2% and I got blue error screen that said the machine had to be restarted. On restart, the "Auto Repair" utility starts, gets another blue screen error, and re-restarts. Then it runs again and says it's "fixing errors on disk", then a blue screen error, then a restart, repair, bluescreen error, restart, repair, error, restart etc. etc. I soon discover it is stuck in this loop for infinity.

Call #2:

Said that my system Reset was thwarted by a blue screen and subsequent cyclical repair->error->restarts. They asked what the error was and I told them it didn't give me exact error messages. Rep told me to power off the machine and turn it back on. At the startup screen I was instructed to hit Alt F10 to open the E-recovery menu. I then was told to restart the Full Reset, and this time the reset worked. It indeed took 3+ hours - pointless, considering it's a brand new machine.

But the result of the Full Reset was nothing - the OS is fine but the touch pad still doesn't work.

Call #3:

I stated nothing had worked. The Rep said Reset was the final step, so he put a ticket in for a hardware repair. I'm now FedExing my machine to Acer's repair facility tomorrow.

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I already have the feeling this machine is going to spend more time in the repair shop than in my home. This is unfortunate. And Acer is still better than lenovo or Asus. The future of technology looks bleak.

In the meantime, I will post back when I get the machine back and the results.

dibs

Hi may not be the answer to your question but something to ponder on. Is it me or has Windows 8-1 got a mind of it's own. For the money the ES1-512 is a great machine let down by the operating system. I gave it a week, threw caution to the wind, and down graded it to Windows 7. Now to the finger pad, it slowed down. I got it back by installing the latest Windows 7 drivers from Synapsis. That's how I came to your post looking for the solution. Good Luck.

Ironman0737

I did get the machine back in about 10 business days. They "reflashed" the BIOS and also physically changed out the touchpad and the cable that goes to the board. It has worked better than original so far.

Since, I had one brief incident where it got confused. It decided to highlight/drag items on single tap and made me have to double tap everything I used to single tap on (like choosing options or opening links). Although that problem was annoying, it was solved with a simple restart.

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