–UPDATE, Oct 18th, 2017–Dell have just started a free battery replacement program for affected laptops. Check the Dell Product Bulletin page and enter your service tag number to see if you can get a free replacement. If you wish to replace the battery yourself, this post will show you how.
I’ve had a Dell XPS 15 (9550) for coming up on 2 years now, and it’s well out of warranty. Recently I noticed the trackpad was getting harder to click and the front edge of the trackpad had been lifted up a little. I originally thought I had something stuck under there. You know; crumbs, food stuff, small creatures of the deep, children. Something like that. But it continued to rise up ever so slowly, to the point I could no longer actually click the trackpad no matter how hard I pushed.
Looking online I found a few posts that described a similar problem. They mentioned that battery swelling causes the problem since the battery is directly under the trackpad.
I opened up the laptop and looked for myself. Sure enough this was the problem so I went and bought a replacement battery from an online seller. Part number 4GVGH or 1P6KD since they’re the same thing. It took about two weeks to arrive and once it did, it was a pretty simple process to swap them over.
I was able to disable the touch screen by doing the following: 1. Right-click and select 'All Apps' at the lower right corner, then select Control Panel 2. Select Hardware and Sound 3. Select Device Manager 4. Select Human Interface Devices 5. From the list, look for the driver for the touch screen. Want to request a video, do it. Latest Dell Touchpad Driver:http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/4/Drivers/DriversDetails?driverId=VRPMP. Tweak the touchpad settings on the Dell XPS 13 There are a few things you can do to tame the XPS 13 touchpad. You can tweak a setting, turn off two finger pinch or change the drivers. Let’s take a quick look at each. Tweaking the touchpad A couple of quick tweaks to the touchpad can make a big difference. Sep 09, 2019 With our new Dell laptops there is a 'Dell Touch pad' app that you need to download from the Windows store, that gives you more setting options. You can find it from the Touch pad settings window additional settings click to change Dell touch pad settings. That will bring up the Windows Store App Dialog. It is a free app, so there is that.
Here’s some photos of what I did, in case you have a similar problem.
- Get upset by the raised front edge of the trackpad
- Buy a screwdriver kit from a local store for A$20. Ensure it has Torx heads as the laptop base uses T-5 screws.
Dell Xps Disable Touchpad
- Remove the base of the laptop. Don’t forget the two regular screws under the flap. See how the battery is swollen. Remove it by sliding out the power connector (top right, near the + in the picture) and then remove the screws the arrows point to.
- Feel free to compare the old and new batteries to see just how bad the problem is. The new battery is on the right!
- Now install the new battery. Don’t forget to be careful and gentle with the power connector on the top right as it’s a little fiddly to get it into the correct position.
- Put the case back together and you should find your trackpad is (almost) as good as new.
All up, it took me about 15 minutes to shutdown the laptop, open it up, replace the battery, take some photos and put it all back together. The battery even came with a decent amount of charge!
P.S. I should point out the usual things: if you do this yourself you will void your warranty (if any still remains). I’m not responsible for your results, and please remember to dispose of your battery in an environmentally friendly way (recycling centres, battery collection centres, etc.) [updateIf you get your replacement battery from Dell they’ll want you to send the original battery back to them, so no recycling required]
Good luck.
One of my most loved features of some Touchpad drivers are “Disable when another pointing device is connected”. I have been trying for a while to get the same thing running on my XPS, as the touchpad is so big and the keyboard so small, it is almost always an annoyance when you accidentally touch it. Well, today I found a quick solution, albeit a manual one. I have tried GPointing Device Settings, Touchpad Indicator and more, with no success. The configuration tool in Ubuntu only lets me do some tweaks to speeds etc, but not disable the device. Recently it has annoyed me so much that I went the terminal route and wanted to disable it manually with X11. Hit read more if you want the commands.
Simply put, you first need to find the device name. You find that by running this command:
xinput list
On my computer it is a bit treacherous, as there are two names for the touchpad, one of them is the right one and not so easy to guess it is. What I get is this:
⎡ Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)]
⎜ ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ ROCCAT ROCCAT Kone Pure id=9 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ ATML1000:00 03EB:842F id=12 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ PS/2 Synaptics TouchPad id=16 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ DLL05E3:01 06CB:2734 id=13 [slave pointer (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard id=3 [master keyboard (2)]
↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard id=5 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Power Button id=6 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Video Bus id=7 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Power Button id=8 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ ROCCAT ROCCAT Kone Pure id=10 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Integrated Webcam id=11 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard id=14 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Dell WMI hotkeys id=15 [slave keyboard (3)]
This is with a Razor mouse connected as well (ROCCAT KONE), but the correct name is the DLL05E3:01 06CB:2734, but on yours it might be different. Be sure to identify the correct one. So in order to disable it, I just run this command:
xinput –set-prop “DLL05E3:01 06CB:2734” “Device Enabled” 0
To enable it again, you just run this command:
Dell Xps Disable Touchpad Password
xinput –set-prop “DLL05E3:01 06CB:2734” “Device Enabled” 1
Dell Xps Deactivate Touchpad
Dell Xps Disable Touchpad Bios
While this isnt the most pretty solution, it works and is fairly easy to maintain. I just copy pasted the command in to a text document, so I can easily copy it over to a terminal window. For quick reference, if you want to paste in to a terminal window, just hit Shift+Ins, not Ctrl+V.