Aspire Touchscreen Problem

System

This discussion was created from comments split from: Aspire R14 Touchscreen Problem.

Yeti1851

It is now February 2020 and I have not seen a solution for the mouse random movement and random clicking (ghosting, puddling) problem described above in this thread. My Acer notebook has been great, except for this problem, which is now causing more numerous errors during normal use. I cannot trust it for use when filling our forms or making financial entries, as the risk of input errors due to the puddling/clicking issue is too high. The puddling is much worse when the notebook is under AC power, so that does seem to point to a charger/grounding issue .  Acer - please post a solution. 

billsey

@Yeti1851 you should start a new thread for your issue, the original is two years old and may or may not be the same issue as you are seeing.

Yeti1851

Thank you Billsey - New thread started. This is the exact same issue as the thread that I originally posted. Here are the problem descriptions from 6 other Acer Notebook users, which is the same symptom I am seeing:

1) the touchscreen has started acting up recently. It sometimes goes mad and looks as if a ghost is tapping all over it really fast! If the background was a picture of a lake, you would think it's animated and rain is falling on the water surface. The tap marks appear really fast and all over the screen, but they're more concentrated around the edges. It gets almost impossible to use the keyboard and/or the touchpad as the "taps" cancel every command/click before you can complete it.

2) the "blinking circle" opens various windows and desktop folders. Using the touch screen to "x" out of a program or file won't always work. It's random too - I can be working and the blinking circles start, or I can be away from the computer for 6+ hours, come back, and a window is open that I didn't open, and the circles are "blinking."

3) Over the last while now I've had an issue where I suddenly lose control of the mouse - the cursor starts jumping all over opening random things. I get the grey circles as when one touches the screen except they're popping up all over the place.

4) I have had this issue with the touchscreen going crazy for quite a while.  It's hard to describe (but has been described well here). I call it "puddling", where the touchscreen acts like a ghost is hitting it and the various areas light up as if they were drops hitting a puddle. Every icon that gets "hit" is activated, so programs open and then are activated....very frustrating!

5) When I am charging the laptop from scratch (battery died and pc goes black) the issue will occur.  If I plug it in while the PC is running Windows 10 normally and the battery is low....it immediately starts happening.

6) Here it is August 2019 and I am experiencing that same ghosting problem, and have been for at least six months. It can be fine for hours, or only minutes.  It can be fine, I look away, and then I look back and it's going nuts and four new apps have opened all by themselves.  It is literally like invisible fingers are poking at the screen.

Commodore_1995#

Yes, the vanilla forum system created a new topic for you and ended up getting the answer from colleague billsey who was in the previous topic. It would be interesting if you provided the exact model of the laptop. Example A515-51-58VH.

Yeti1851

The sticker on the notebook screen says "Aspire R 14" and on the back of the notebook is says "R5-471T-52EE". 

Commodore_1995#

In addition to the grounding issue, have you checked the battery status and tried to install the IO drivers?

billsey

So the R5-471T has a touch controller daughter card up near the display. There are several possibilities I see that could cause these symptoms. There might be electrical interference affecting the digitizer itself, affecting the wiring between the digitizer and the control board or affecting the wiring between the control board and the motherboard. The other possibilities are the digitizer itself and the control board itself. If the problem were interference then the potential solutions @egydiocoelho suggests may help pin it down, but in addition I'd look at the environment around the laptop. It is placed on a surface conducive to static electricity (such as a polyester cloth)? Are there sources of electrical noise adjacent to the laptop or plugged into the same circuit? If so could you test by moving the laptop elsewhere? Is there a chance there are contaminants on the surface of the screen that could be treated as fingers? The sensors are basically looking for inductors close to the surface of the digitizer, so I can envision a oil or grease on the surface triggering touches. Less likely, I think, is pressure from a warped case, I've never been able to create false touches by twisting a display...

StuHatch

I have the same problem as Yeti 1851.  The "ghost touches" usually start if the laptop has been on but inactive for a few minutes.  If I step away to, say, get a cup of coffee, when I come back I find the "ghost" has opened a whole bunch of apps and is still clicking aways like mad.  It is impossible to get control of the cursor even to shut down, or to use the touch screen to shut down.  Generally I close the laptop, and after a minute or so when I reopen it I can unlock the screen, close all the unwanted open apps, and get back to business.  (Sometimes I have close and open a few times before it behaves itself).  I saw one older post where the user replaced the touchscreen and that fixed the problem for a year, then it started again.  Any thoughts as to whether replacing the screen might do the trick?  I see you can purchase them for about $120.