Arch Linux

hydrosIII

Member

Registered: 2013-04-04

Posts: 127

Touchpad in netbook not working while it's in charge,

Hi, I have this issue with my old netbook  that is running Arch on it. Everything was working fine, since the last month. The touchpad began to fail, and i had to carry a mouse around to be able to use X in the netbook.
Yesteday by luck i discovered that this behaviour just occurs when i have the netbook connected to the powercable and charging, if i unplug it the touchpad begins to work again. My netbook has Arch and Debian installed on it, the behaviour of the touchpad is the same.So im suspecting the motherboard is shortcircuiting.

Here are the questions: ¿ Is there a software solution for this issue, ? ¿Can i see what's happening in the motherboard via arch linux?
¿ Is the netbook close to its death date, and i should consider backing up information, and stop using it??

Im saying this because it's a really old netbook, a Toshiba NB 200.

Thank you

runical

Member

From: The Netherlands

Registered: 2012-03-03

Posts: 896

Re: Touchpad in netbook not working while it's in charge,

This sounds like a hardware failure. As such, I don't think there will be a software solution (Defective hardware cannot do the things the software wants or provide the input for the software). You'll have to check though. Here is an article about checking your hardware using standard linux utilities. You'll want to check if the touchpad is still detected when the netbook is plugged in. This will tell you if it is an hardware failure or not. If it is a hardware failure, you are pretty much out of luck as far as I know. Otherwise it might be the driver.

And don't forget, backups are always good

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