Touchpad issue on XPS 9720

[ahershko]

I’m running EndeavourOS (Gnome) on an XPS 9720. It runs fine for hours, and then at some point the touchpad will become unstable/unusable (stops responding for a few seconds, then works for a few seconds, then stops responding again, then scrolls the screen when it should be moving the cursor, etc.).

I tried other distros (Ubuntu, Fedora and openSUSE), and another DE (KDE), but it happens there too. Opened a support case with Dell and they replaced the touchpad, but the issue still occurs.

Any idea on how to fix/debug this? I found some people complaining about this in various forums (e.g., XPS 9720 touch pad issues : r/DellXPS (reddit.com)) but no suggested solution.

Thanks!

[Pudge]

Using the search feature, I found that another user had the same problem.

Dell xps 9720

Has anyone succeeded installing EOS on dell xps 9720? On my side the installation process is painfully slow (same with pure arch), and the OS is completely unusable after the install. I have the mouse and say I can open the settings, but I can’t click on stuff inside. Or I can open the terminal but again, I have very limited control over it it terms of clicking stuff. The screen resolution has only one option (I forgot the exact numbers) and it things where very small. And when I shut down, it …

Maybe there will be a clue there.

Pudge

[maqni]

Maybe this thread (my first thread ever) may be of help to you, too? On my old Dell laptop, I could solve issues by installing other touchpad drivers and changing settings in its configuration files:

Touchpad too sensitive and no option to adjust it

Hi everyone, I installed EndeavourOS (offline install with XFCE, dual boot with Win7) on my 10-year-old Dell laptop 10 days ago, and so far I am very happy with it. And although I am still a half-beginner in using Linux (have used Ubuntu for half a year now), I am getting along with it very well, except for a few small things. One issue is that my touchpad is much too sensitive, so my mouse pointer wobbles and jumps away when I try using it and clicking icons with it. It’s working perfectly we…

[ahershko]

Thanks for the suggestions both. I didn’t try replacing the touchpad drivers yet, will look into that.

[mihalycsaba]

I had a really similar problem on a lenovo laptop, it was because the touch pad got too warm. Did you try to use it with windows with the same kind of workload?

[mihalycsaba]

people complain about the heat here too: https://www.reddit.com/r/DellXPS/comments/whju4q/xps_17_9720_2022_heat_from_the_keyboard/

try using the gpu on the cpu, make sure the nvidia gpu isn’t used if not playing something. With an intel+nvidia combo, this laptop is a furnace with linux for sure.