Dell Inspiron 15 7000 series (7537) laptop's touchpad unusable because during window moves or drag and drop items move around wildly

[Jason Quinn]

Touchpad for the Dell Inspiron 7537 cannot move objects on desktop without troubles. I have tried this under the GNOME, KDE, and Unity desktops and they all show the problem so it is not there. I have the latest (A10) BIOS from Dell and am running a fully up-to-date Ubuntu 14.04.

It is the intergrated touchpad (well, clickpad since there are no distinct buttons) for one of Dell's most popular laptops. A web search finds other people having similar trouble.

You cannot move windows around because they jump around wildly making the device practically unusable. It requires using an external mouse with the laptop.

Problem is almost surely with the Synaptic driver for the touchpad.

Here's the output of "lspci" if that helps:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Haswell-ULT DRAM Controller (rev 0b)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Haswell-ULT Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 0b)
00:03.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Haswell-ULT HD Audio Controller (rev 0b)
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Lynx Point-LP USB xHCI HC (rev 04)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Lynx Point-LP HECI #0 (rev 04)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Lynx Point-LP HD Audio Controller (rev 04)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Lynx Point-LP PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev e4)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Lynx Point-LP PCI Express Root Port 3 (rev e4)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Lynx Point-LP PCI Express Root Port 4 (rev e4)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Lynx Point-LP PCI Express Root Port 5 (rev e4)
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Lynx Point-LP USB EHCI #1 (rev 04)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Lynx Point-LP LPC Controller (rev 04)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Lynx Point-LP SATA Controller 1 [AHCI mode] (rev 04)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation Lynx Point-LP SMBus Controller (rev 04)
02:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wireless 7260 (rev 73)
03:00.0 Unassigned class [ff00]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Device 5287 (rev 01)
03:00.1 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 12)
04:00.0 3D controller: NVIDIA Corporation GK107M [GeForce GT 750M] (rev a1)

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04
Package: xserver-xorg-input-synaptics-dev 1.7.4-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.13.0-36.63-generic 3.13.11.6
Uname: Linux 3.13.0-36-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.14.1-0ubuntu3.5
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: Unity
Date: Sat Oct 4 12:07:21 2014
Dependencies:
 x11proto-core-dev 7.0.24-1
 xorg-sgml-doctools 1:1.11-1
DistUpgraded: Fresh install
DistroCodename: trusty
DistroVariant: ubuntu
InstallationDate: Installed on 2014-09-25 (9 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS "Trusty Tahr" - Release amd64 (20140722.2)
MachineType: Dell Inc. Inspiron 7537
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-36-generic root=UUID=9300ba17-9a18-4f40-9c6f-62f40ee49777 ro quiet splash
SourcePackage: xserver-xorg-input-synaptics
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
dmi.bios.date: 07/18/2014
dmi.bios.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.bios.version: A10
dmi.board.name: 038M0M
dmi.board.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.board.version: A00
dmi.chassis.type: 8
dmi.chassis.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.chassis.version: 0.1
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnDellInc.:bvrA10:bd07/18/2014:svnDellInc.:pnInspiron7537:pvr:rvnDellInc.:rn038M0M:rvrA00:cvnDellInc.:ct8:cvr0.1:
dmi.product.name: Inspiron 7537
dmi.sys.vendor: Dell Inc.
version.compiz: compiz 1:0.9.11.2+14.04.20140714-0ubuntu1
version.ia32-libs: ia32-libs N/A
version.libdrm2: libdrm2 2.4.52-1
version.libgl1-mesa-dri: libgl1-mesa-dri 10.1.3-0ubuntu0.1
version.libgl1-mesa-dri-experimental: libgl1-mesa-dri-experimental N/A
version.libgl1-mesa-glx: libgl1-mesa-glx 10.1.3-0ubuntu0.1
version.xserver-xorg-core: xserver-xorg-core 2:1.15.1-0ubuntu2.1
version.xserver-xorg-input-evdev: xserver-xorg-input-evdev 1:2.8.2-1ubuntu2
version.xserver-xorg-video-ati: xserver-xorg-video-ati 1:7.3.0-1ubuntu3.1
version.xserver-xorg-video-intel: xserver-xorg-video-intel 2:2.99.910-0ubuntu1.1
version.xserver-xorg-video-nouveau: xserver-xorg-video-nouveau 1:1.0.10-1ubuntu2
xserver.bootTime: Sat Oct 4 11:50:28 2014
xserver.configfile: /etc/X11/xorg.conf
xserver.errors:
 NVIDIA(0): Failed to initiate mode change.
 NVIDIA(0): Failed to complete mode change
xserver.logfile: /var/log/Xorg.0.log
xserver.outputs:
 product id 19528
 vendor SDC
xserver.version: 2:1.15.1-0ubuntu2.1

[arekanderu (arekanderu)]

I confirm this bug as well

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Ryan Zupancic (ryan-s-zupancic)]

Just upgraded to 14.10 and fixed the problem.

[claudio@ubuntu (claudio.ubuntu)]

The problem is still there on Ubuntu 16.10 as exactly described by the original bug reporter.

[claudio@ubuntu (claudio.ubuntu)]

Obviously, I meant 15.10. :)

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Jason Quinn, thank you for reporting this and helping make Ubuntu better.

To see if this is already resolved, could you please test http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/ and advise to the results?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for xserver-xorg-input-synaptics (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]