Re: flaky trackpad on Dell Latitude E7250

Update: it turned out that BOTH the trackpads had the same fault.
(I had briefly considered this possibility when testing , but thought it was very unlikely , as I didn't recall any trackpad problems from the original laptop).

I'm relieved to find the problem lay in the trackpad after all, and not in the motherboard

Hi all,
Does anyone know whether a jumpy/freezing/'flaky' touchpad can be due to a motherboard problem ?

I have a Dell Latitude E7250 whose motherboard failed, so I bought a damaged-but-working E7250 on eBay, to use its motherboard (Compal LA-A971P) in mine.

When I received the eBay laptop and first quickly tested it by booting into the BIOS, I noticed that the trackpad cursor movement was intermittently unreliable - the cursor would follow your finger movement for a few seconds, then stop moving, and you would have to take your finger off the trackpad and...

Re: New Members - please post your introductions here

Hi all,
I started repairing/refurbishing old laptops (mainly bought on eBay) just over a year ago as something to do during the first Covid lockdown, after I cleared out some old Dell laptops from a cupboard at home and was surprised how well they sold on eBay.

I worked in IT as a UNIX sysadmin for 25 years (semi-retired now) and remember enough of my electronics studied at Uni in the 1980's to be able to read a laptop schematic a little, so am joining this forum to try and improve my board-level diag/repair...