Touchpad Fails, Works on Reboot, Spams i2c_designware timeouts

quinnr · 2025-07-09 15:49:43

After being forced to use Windows for work for a decade or so, I bought a cheap laptop to throw Linux onto and so far Arch. has been fantastic and smooth. It's been a lot of fun so far.

But there is one frustrating issue I cannot get to the bottom of: seemingly a random amount of time after boot, the laptop touchpad will fail. Journalctl will have a few errors followed by several thousand pages of spam. This happens in the TTY terminal, in Hyprland, it seems clearly to be a hardware communication issue but I cannot figure out what is causing it. I have not used the laptop for anything else, so I do not know if this issue happens in other operating systems.

Device: Dell Inspiron 15 3535. Touchpad specifications (not very helpful).

Here is the issue:
1. Laptop is turned on. Everything works.

2. After a seemingly random amount of time (10 minutes? an hour? 2 hours? it depends), the following errors appear in journalctl and the touchpad fails entirely:

Jul 09 10:28:15 QARCHTOP kernel: i2c_designware AMDI0010:03: timeout waiting for bus ready
Jul 09 10:28:15 QARCHTOP kernel: i2c_designware AMDI0010:03: timeout waiting for bus ready
Jul 09 10:28:15 QARCHTOP kernel: i2c_designware AMDI0010:03: timeout waiting for bus ready
Jul 09 10:28:15 QARCHTOP kernel: i2c_designware AMDI0010:03: timeout waiting for bus ready
Jul 09 10:28:15 QARCHTOP kernel: i2c_designware AMDI0010:03: timeout waiting for bus ready
Jul 09 10:28:15 QARCHTOP kernel: i2c_designware AMDI0010:03: timeout waiting for bus ready
Jul 09 10:28:15 QARCHTOP kernel: i2c_designware AMDI0010:03: timeout waiting for bus ready
Jul 09 10:28:15 QARCHTOP kernel: i2c_designware AMDI0010:03: timeout waiting for bus ready
Jul 09 10:28:15 QARCHTOP kernel: i2c_designware AMDI0010:03: timeout waiting for bus ready
Jul 09 10:28:15 QARCHTOP kernel: i2c_designware AMDI0010:03: timeout waiting for bus ready
Jul 09 10:28:15 QARCHTOP kernel: i2c_designware AMDI0010:03: timeout waiting for bus ready
[x1000s]

The only other errors I can find with this module are, i.e.:

Jul 09 10:32:04 QARCHTOP kernel: i2c_designware AMDI0010:03: controller timed out
Jul 09 10:32:17 QARCHTOP kernel: i2c_designware AMDI0010:03: i2c_dw_handle_tx_abort: lost arbitration
Jul 09 10:32:18 QARCHTOP kernel: i2c_designware AMDI0010:03: controller timed out

The touchpad cannot be used. All keyboard commands and apps work.

3. After a full reboot, the touchpad works again.

This is consistent behavior through dozens of cycles. I have update the BIOS, reinstalled Arch and tried alternate Linux kernels, update the kernel. Google is not much help either.

Any ideas on what to investigate or try? The computer was cheap enough that it'd be less of a hassle to replace than try to swap the touchpad. I want to solve this out of principle at this point.

Last edited by quinnr (2025-07-09 15:56:42)

gromit · 2025-07-09 15:58:41

Does it work with the linux-lts kernel?

quinnr · 2025-07-09 16:01:00

gromit wrote:

Does it work with the linux-lts kernel?

I don't think I've tried linux-lts but I will today/tomorrow and report back.

quinnr · 2025-07-09 16:26:40

gromit wrote:

Does it work with the linux-lts kernel?

Same issues occur on linux-lts kernel.

gromit · 2025-07-09 16:35:20

Is this also the case with the latest mainline release of the kernel?

sudo pacman -U https://pkgbuild.com/~gromit/linux-bisection-kernels/linux-mainline-6.16rc5-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst

quinnr · 2025-07-09 16:37:45

gromit wrote:

Is this also the case with the latest mainline release of the kernel?
sudo pacman -U https://pkgbuild.com/~gromit/linux-bisection-kernels/linux-mainline-6.16rc5-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst

For daily use I am on

Linux QARCHTOP 6.16.0-rc4-1-mainline

And definitely have the issue on mainline as recently as rc4. I have not upgrade to rc5-1 yet but I will also try that and report back.

quinnr · 2025-07-17 12:41:39

gromit wrote:

Is this also the case with the latest mainline release of the kernel?
sudo pacman -U https://pkgbuild.com/~gromit/linux-bisection-kernels/linux-mainline-6.16rc5-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst

Took a few days, but this kernel is giving the same timeout errors and issues.

gromit · 2025-07-17 13:01:27

This could be a kernel regression, which should be bisected and reported to the upstream kernel developers

Are you confident to do the bisection on your own or do you need some help?
If you want we could also provide you with pre-built kernel images for you to test (which greatly speeds up the test time) a

Good info to get you started is:
- https://docs.kernel.org/admin-guide/rep … sions.html
- https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Kernel … egressions

quinnr · 2025-07-17 14:04:18

gromit wrote:

This could be a kernel regression, which should be bisected and reported to the upstream kernel developers
Are you confident to do the bisection on your own or do you need some help?
If you want we could also provide you with pre-built kernel images for you to test (which greatly speeds up the test time) a
Good info to get you started is:
- https://docs.kernel.org/admin-guide/rep … sions.html
- https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Kernel … egressions

Will do, super helpful guidance thanks! I'll see if I can get to a kernel that works reliably.

I was wondering if it might be a hardware issue since I haven't been able to get any of the kernels working but it's odd that it reliably works again on reboot.

If you have pre-built kernel images or guidance on finding them that'd be fantastic, the kernel takes ages to build on this laptop. But I generally think I can figure it out from the links provided.

Last edited by quinnr (2025-07-17 14:04:34)

gromit · 2025-07-17 18:02:50

Ah wait, I was mistaken that we had already determined that we had a working kernel version in the past...

Could you test a few of the past kernels from the archive to determine if that has ever worked?
See https://archive.archlinux.org/packages/l/linux/ for previous kernels

Arch Linux

#1 2025-07-09 15:49:43

Touchpad Fails, Works on Reboot, Spams i2c_designware timeouts

#2 2025-07-09 15:58:41

Re: Touchpad Fails, Works on Reboot, Spams i2c_designware timeouts

#3 2025-07-09 16:01:00

Re: Touchpad Fails, Works on Reboot, Spams i2c_designware timeouts

#4 2025-07-09 16:26:40

Re: Touchpad Fails, Works on Reboot, Spams i2c_designware timeouts

#5 2025-07-09 16:35:20

Re: Touchpad Fails, Works on Reboot, Spams i2c_designware timeouts

#6 2025-07-09 16:37:45

Re: Touchpad Fails, Works on Reboot, Spams i2c_designware timeouts

#7 2025-07-17 12:41:39

Re: Touchpad Fails, Works on Reboot, Spams i2c_designware timeouts

#8 2025-07-17 13:01:27

Re: Touchpad Fails, Works on Reboot, Spams i2c_designware timeouts

#9 2025-07-17 14:04:18

Re: Touchpad Fails, Works on Reboot, Spams i2c_designware timeouts

#10 2025-07-17 18:02:50

Re: Touchpad Fails, Works on Reboot, Spams i2c_designware timeouts

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