Windows – Synaptics touchpad stops working randomly

scrollingsynaptics-touchpadwindows

I have two laptops. One dell Vostro and other Vaio Z. Both have Synaptics (Yes, I have checked, and the original drivers were from Synaptics as well). On both laptops, the touchpad scrolling stops working at some arbitrary time and nothing seems to solve it except a reboot. Sometimes, it randomly starts working again. I have downloaded all latest drivers from OEM.

Interestingly, when I run a program as Administrator, scrolling works in that window only.

This problem is very odd. It happens without any reason and I've not been able to find a fix for more than a year. I have seen some unusual suggestions on forums (e.g., to "restore windows to a previous working state") but never any fix that solves this issue properly. I have tried installing latest drivers and I DO NOT want to restore windows to a previous working configuration.

OS:
Windows 7 64 bit Professional (Sony Vaio Z – VPCZ128GG)
Windows 7 32 bit Professional (Dell)

EDIT: Temporary solution is to uninstall the synaptics driver and let Windows 7 use its default built in one. However, I really prefer the Synaptic driver because it activates the scroll button rather than the mouse wheel (useful in some apps)

Best Answer

save this as .bat

taskkill -f -im syntpenh.exe
cd C:\Program Files\Synaptics\SynTP
start "" "syntpenh.exe"
exit

that's for unfreezing TP

does the TP freeze when you do a 3-finger tap? If yes, try doing the 3-f tap few more times whether it unfreezes itself. If not, run that .bat.

Related Question