Surface touch screen works with pen, but not my finger

Question

Touchscreen stopped working with my hand after the windows 11 update. But I seem to be able to use the touchscreen with a pen. What is wrong? It seemed to work normally on windows 10. It updated at night.

Answer 1

Hi Manoe Singh,

Thank you for posting in Microsoft Community.

It appears that you are experiencing an issue with your Surface Pro6 device where the pen is functional, but the touch feature is not working. One possible explanation for this issue could be a touch driver problem.

Let’s work together in finding the best solution to this issue.  Here are some steps you can try to resolve the issue:

1. Boot to UEFI and test touch functionality: This will help determine if the issue is hardware or software related. (UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) is an environment that exists completely outside of Windows and other installed applications.) If the issue exists in UEFI, then we know it's a hardware failure.
2. To open UEFI screen, follow these steps:
   • Go to Start > Power > Shut down.
   • When Surface is off, press and hold the volume up button and press the power button until a Microsoft or Surface logo appears onscreen.
   • Once you are in UEFI, touch your Surface screen and see if it responds normally. Try to navigate in UEFI by tapping various menu items. If touch doesn’t work on your Surface, your touchscreen most likely experienced a hardware failure. Your next step is to submit a service order. If touch works on your Surface, select EXIT, follow any onscreen instructions, and restart Windows. Then go to reinstall the touchscreen driver
3. Reinstall the touchscreen driver: You can try reinstalling the touchscreen driver to see if that resolves the issue. To do this, follow these steps:
   • In the search box on the taskbar, enter device manager, and then select Device Manager in the list of results.
   • Expand the Human Interface Devices category.
   • Right-click on the HID-compliant touch screen and select Uninstall device.
   • Do not put any check mark on the small box that say complete delete just click uninstall below or okay.
   • Right-click on Intel(R) Precise Touch Device and select Uninstall. same do not put any check mark on the box that say complete delete.
   • Restart your Surface. Windows will automatically reinstall the driver.
4. After all the steps and the device touch screen work in the UEFI and not in Windows environment. Next, we will need to Reset the Surface device back to default.

I hope I have answered all your questions. Please let me know how it goes.

Kind regards,

Christopher.

Answer 2

Hi Christopher,

Thank you for your reply.

The issue still exists in UEFI. It must be a hardware failure. The other steps didn't help.

Kind regards,

Manoe

Answer 3

Hi Manoe Singh,

I’m sorry for the delay in resolving your issue. If the problem continues to occur on the UEFI screen and reinstalling the touchscreen driver and restarting the device does not resolve the issue, it is possible that there is a hardware problem with your device. However, before concluding that this is a hardware issue, we can try one more step. We can download and install the recovery image on your Surface device. The recovery image is a fresh Windows installation specific to your Surface device.

To Download USB Recovery Image - http://aka.ms/sri    

REQUIREMENTS:

To ensure compatibility with your Surface device, it is recommended to use a USB flash drive with a minimum storage capacity of 16 GB to 32 GB and format it to FAT32. If the storage capacity exceeds 32 GB, it is not possible to format it to FAT32 as only XFAT and NTFS options are available. Please note that if a USB flash drive is formatted to XFAT or NTFS, it will not be detected on your Surface device. Need another Windows PC to download the recovery image.

NOTE: Creating a recovery drive will erase all existing files that are stored on the SSD drive. Make sure to transfer any important data on your USB flash drive to another storage device before you proceed.

Once the download is complete, create a folder on your desktop and rename it to ‘recovery’. Extract the recovery image to the folder you created on your desktop. After the extraction is complete, select all the files in the folder and copy and paste them directly to your USB flash drive. Do not copy the folder directly to the USB. Once the copying is done, remove the USB and connect it to your Surface.

When you are ready, please click this link Creating and using a USB recovery drive for Surface - Microsoft Support to follow the step on how to use the recovery image.

Please let me know how it goes.

Kind regards,

Christopher.

Answer 4

Hello Manoe Singh

We haven't heard from you, so we assume that your issue has already been addressed. We will not be monitoring this thread moving forward so, if you need further assistance, please create a new thread to discuss these concerns by clicking this link:Create a new question (microsoft.com)Thank you for understanding.

 Regards,

Christopher