Touchpad only responds to extremly light touch

Question

I have been using my surface book for over six months now.Today I plugged in an SD card for the first time and uploaded some photos. At the time I was using a Bluetooth mouse and had no issues.Since then, I unplugged the surface book and turned off the Bluetooth, and noticed I am unable to use the trackpad. It responds to taps and clicks, but to move the cursor I have to barely touch the pad, and even that moves it very intermittently. I have tried disconnecting and reconnecting the base, check updates on the drivers, and of course, restarted to no avail. I read a similar post about a keyboard and touchpad delay while an SD card was inserted and attempted several recommendations from that post without any results.

Answer 1

Hi Elijah,

Trackpad issues can be due to either hardware or driver issues. Just to verify, is the issue present only when an SD card is inserted in the slot? Also, have you already performed a two-button shutdown? To do this, press and hold the Volume-up button and the Power button on your Surface at the same time for 15 seconds and then release both of them. The screen may flash the Surface logo, but remember to continue holding down the buttons for 15 seconds.

Some Surface Book users had trackpad multi-touch issues, and disabling/enabling the "Intel(R) Precise Touch Device" in the device manager works as a workaround. You might want to try that as well. Open the device manager, then click on human interface devices to expand it and it should be near the bottom of the list.

If the issue persists, we recommend that you run the Surface Diagnostic Toolkit. The SDT resolves common issues with your Surface including touchpad issues. The diagnosis may take 15 minutes or less, but can take an hour or longer depending on your internet connection speed and on the repairs that the tool needs to do to fix the problems.

Click hereto download the Surface Diagnostic Tool.

Give us an update, and let us know if you have any additional concerns.

Regards.

Answer 2

Thank you for the advice, I followed those steps and when that didn't work I thought I would try the hardware end. I bought this skin cover for the surface book over six months ago:

JRC- Silver Ultra-Thin Case Decals Skins for Microsoft Surface Book, Stickers Fit Laptop Body Precisely, 3M Decal Decorative Protector,Set of 4 section

It has a thin trackpad cover as well, which has worked like a charm for over 6 months. I removed the skin over it and it works fine now. Strange, it didn't have any scratches or signs of wear, but it was definitely the source of the problem. Thanks again!

Answer 3

Hi Elijah,

There seems to be an issue with your device. We suggest that you perform the steps on this article to resolve touchpad issues for your Surface Book.

Keep us updated on the status of the issue. We will be glad to assist you further.