Panasonic Toughbook Touchpad issues

[TRexRules]

Hello,

I have been troubleshooting this issue for quite a while now. I work for a police department and this deals with panasonic toughbook 53s and ford edge interceptor models. I feel like I have tried everything but maybe someone has an angle I haven't thought of. Panasonic support is useless, I am not spending anymore time on the phone with them and ford is hard to connect with.

Problem: The touchpad on the toughbooks will move the cursor but the cursor will erratically jump around, and not go where you want it. It will act like the cursor is stuck in one location and the mouse pointer will snap back to the same location if you try to move it with the touchpad.

This does not happen all the time. It is most prevalent after idling for some periods. I will note that I have NOT been able to reproduce this issue, however I have seen it when it happens so I know it is real. Every time I take the toughbooks into the office and use them for the day they have no issues, but it is not practical for me to take a police cruiser for a day to test the issue. They say rebooting fixes the issue, but only temporarily. They might reboot 3-4 times in a nightly shift.


Troubleshooting steps:

I have done the following, none have resolved the issue.

- Reinstall mouse driver with factory panasonic driver
- delete factory driver and use windows generic driver
- disable touch screen
- adjust synaptics settings to require more resistance when moving cursor
- Switch laptops with another cruiser that doesn't have issues. The problem follows the cruiser not the laptop.
- Put brand new toughbook with manual build of operating system (not imaged) into cruiser, problem remains.
- Replaced battery in cruiser with brand new one.
- Tested alternator and that is fine.
- tested power out put from lind inverter which feeds power to toughbook, this was fine as well.

Please, I am at the end of my wick here.

 

[Atreus21]

Hello,

I have been troubleshooting this issue for quite a while now. I work for a police department and this deals with panasonic toughbook 53s and ford edge interceptor models. I feel like I have tried everything but maybe someone has an angle I haven't thought of. Panasonic support is useless, I am not spending anymore time on the phone with them and ford is hard to connect with.

Problem: The touchpad on the toughbooks will move the cursor but the cursor will erratically jump around, and not go where you want it. It will act like the cursor is stuck in one location and the mouse pointer will snap back to the same location if you try to move it with the touchpad.

This does not happen all the time. It is most prevalent after idling for some periods. I will note that I have NOT been able to reproduce this issue, however I have seen it when it happens so I know it is real. Every time I take the toughbooks into the office and use them for the day they have no issues, but it is not practical for me to take a police cruiser for a day to test the issue. They say rebooting fixes the issue, but only temporarily. They might reboot 3-4 times in a nightly shift.


Troubleshooting steps:

I have done the following, none have resolved the issue.

- Reinstall mouse driver with factory panasonic driver
- delete factory driver and use windows generic driver
- disable touch screen
- adjust synaptics settings to require more resistance when moving cursor
- Switch laptops with another cruiser that doesn't have issues. The problem follows the cruiser not the laptop.
- Put brand new toughbook with manual build of operating system (not imaged) into cruiser, problem remains.
- Replaced battery in cruiser with brand new one.
- Tested alternator and that is fine.
- tested power out put from lind inverter which feeds power to toughbook, this was fine as well.

Please, I am at the end of my wick here.

The problem follows the cruiser, as you deduced. Frankly, that puts the issue somewhat off your plate in my opinion, but I did have one question:

If you plug in an external mouse into the laptop, does the issue occur with the external mouse as well? If not, that right there might be an acceptable workaround, especially if you can get it working with a wireless mouse.

Another possible workaround would be just to use a non-standard toughbook for this one cruiser. Some other brand than Panasonic, if that's possible.

 

[Burpo]

You might try powering laptop from cig lighter & not using the inverter. Something like this & see if it solves your problem.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/DC-Plug-2-5...511057?hash=item2ef0dd0091:g:UmoAAOSwNsdXQ9Hn

 

[Ketchup]

You might try powering laptop from cig lighter & not using the inverter. Something like this & see if it solves your problem.

Going a step further, does it matter if the laptop is plugged in or running on battery? If the problem is the power supply/inverter, you could just run it off battery when using it. Those things are supposed to have really good battery life.

Other than that, my other thought would be vibrations in the vehicle throwing it off. Was the one you borrowed from a different type of vehicle? Does yours have the v6 or the turbo 4?