HP Mini 210 Clickpad issues

[karjaneth]

I'll start off saying that I know I'm not the first person to have problems with this on Ubuntu/Linux Mint, but none of the solutions I've seen so far have helped.
I'm running Linux Mint 9 on an HP Mini 210 with a Clickpad (the touchpad that has buttons under the touchpad surface), and it's giving me a number of issues.
in particular, since the clickable area is also part of the touchpad area, its impossible to click and drag, or even to move the cursor with a finger while resting the thumb on the buttons.
also, I've noticed if i touch any of the edges of the pad (right on the crack between pad and palm rest) it will instantly scroll very rapidly down whatever page/window I'm currently hovering my cursor over.
I've found lots of people having other issues with this hardware, but most of those issues related to right clicking (which works fine for me) or two-finger scrolling (which i don't use). i haven't found anybody having a problem with erratic scrolling on the edge of the touchpad, and the only other place i could find a fix for the erratic button/touchpad confusion was on ubuntuforums, and that fix just ended up killing the touchpad entirely.
I've been a Linux user for awhile, but I'm no expert, and i don't know enough about the insides of xorg or synaptics to know where to poke around and tweak stuff.
so far I've tried the solutions on this forum thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1388164
and I've tried installing gsynaptics and gpointing-device-settings to no avail.
Linux mint is by far my favorite distro for daily use, and I'm sure there's some sort of workaround for this problem, but I've pretty much exhausted my own skill level, and I have great faith in the collective expertise of this forum.
thanks in advance!

[karjaneth]

has nobody else had any success with this issue? there have to be others who are struggling with it.

[itbcn8]

I am having the same problem with my HP Mini 210. Also, the right button doesn't work at all... And when i put 2 finger on it (even if one is scrolling and the other is clicking), the mouse on screen goes crazy!?!?!?!

I hope someone can suggest a fix.

[jonhen]

I too am having this problem on LM 10. There seems to be a whole bunch of people with clickpad issues running Ubuntu too. Someone has uploaded a patch if you search the thread posted in the first post. Unfortunately I found the instructions difficult to follow and gave up. I wasn't keen to implement a patch in the first place in case it gave me grief later on.

Looks like I'm going to have to continue using an external mouse for the foreseeable future.

Had I known that something so basic as a mouse pad was going to give me this much trouble I would have bought a different netbook.

I've sorted all kinds of hardware issues that I have encountered using Linux but this one has me beat.

[Missiledadd]

I also have the same issue. None of the "fixes" help much. I am currently using an external mouse. Does anyone know if Mint 11 fixes this issue?

[karjaneth]

jonhen: i couldn't have put it better. this seems like such a basic thing that one would expect to work on any laptop, and its surprising that it hasn't been sorted out yet in any official patch or update. the problem is straightforward, but there is no equally straightforward fix. i love mint, but i just can't use it on this laptop until this is worked out i hope someone with the abilities to handle this sort of thing is listening! i just don't have the know-how to resolve an issue like this...

[karjaneth]

this issue is still present in mint 11, and additionally, right click is now also broken in katya. click behavior is very strange in 11, actually, and is presenting a new set of problems entirely. in addition to right click and click+drag being broken, the pad recognizes a physical button click no matter where on the clickpad you push. pressing down right in the middle of the clickpad gets a *click* sound, and activates a left-click. also, single clicking sharply seems to act as a double click, perhaps by performing both a click and a tap closely together? anyway, please fix this, it is impossible for me to use mint as my primary OS when i can't rely on my laptop's clickpad. and please respond also if you're having similar problems. maybe if enough people come forward saying this is an issue, it will get more notice. searching "mint clickpad" on google brings this up as the first result, so there must be others.

[Garvan]

this issue is still present in mint 11, and additionally, right click is now also broken in katya. click behavior is very strange in 11, .......<snip>

It is worth while studying how the developers set up this device. I don't like their choices, but in my experience it works like they designed it.

MINT 11 ONLY.
* Movement with adjustable, non-linear acceleration and speed
* Button events through short touching of the touchpad
* Double-Button events through double short touching of the touchpad
* Dragging through short touching and holding down the finger on the touchpad
* Middle and right button events on the upper and lower corner of the touchpad
* Vertical scrolling (button four and five events) through moving the finger
on the right side of the touchpad
* The up/down button sends button four/five events
* Horizontal scrolling (button six and seven events) through moving the finger
on the lower side of the touchpad
* The multi-buttons send button four/five events, and six/seven events for
horizontal scrolling
* Adjustable finger detection
* Multifinger taps: two finger for middle button and three finger for right
button events. (Needs hardware support. Not all models implement this
feature.)
* Run-time configuration using shared memory. This means you can change
parameter settings without restarting the X server (see synclient(1)).
* It also provides a daemon to disable touchpad while typing at the keyboard
and thus avoid unwanted mouse movements (see syndaemon(1)).

It looks like they ignored manual clicking, and set the entire pad area as a tough pad. I am trying to adapt - not happy but I am learning.

Mint 9 would have a different driver than Mint 11, and I have never seen the issue of the OP where the page scrolls if you hit the edge of the pad.

Garvan

[karjaneth]

While i'm glad they are trying to come up with a solution, IMO the way they've chosen is Broken. It isn't the functionality that anyone accustomed to using a touchpad/clickpad would expect, and some aspects are very non-intuitive. I would hope that the developers would reconsider their departure from typical touchpad functionality. The current configuration still makes for a pretty unusable laptop. I might be overreacting a bit, but for an otherwise fantastic distro, its very frustrating that it's being crippled by such a relatively small issue.

[Garvan]

While i'm glad they are trying to come up with a solution, IMO the way they've chosen is Broken. It isn't the functionality that anyone accustomed to using a touchpad/clickpad would expect, and some aspects are very non-intuitive. I would hope that the developers would reconsider their departure from typical touchpad functionality. The current configuration still makes for a pretty unusable laptop. I might be overreacting a bit, but for an otherwise fantastic distro, its very frustrating that it's being crippled by such a relatively small issue.

I want to make it clear that the mouspad driver varies with kernel version, not with distribution. So all Linux versions suffer from the same limiting hard coded choices.

Garvan

[karjaneth]

Interesting! I was not aware of that fact, thank you for clarifying.

[jonhen]

Well here we are it's November and still no fix for the issues. It is so frustrating having bought a netbook and finding it's got a new form of mousepad that hasn't even got a decent driver. I don't blame anybody in the Linux camp, they have performed what is almost a miracle, an operating system that is brilliant and free to use. I blame myself for not researching enough what I was buying. A netbook with a Clickpad that I DID NOT WANT!

Why is it that people have to keep re-inventing the wheel?

I was happy with the simple old mousepad. Now we have this Clickpad and it just doesn't do what I have spent over ten years using and been happy with. Now we have something that if the driver did work I would have to completely relearn how to use and does stuff I didn't want to do in the first place. Doh, I despair.

Thank heaven for the bluetooth mouse. Thank heaven for Linux Mint.

[claudecat]

Sorry to necro-bump this, but I've found a solution:

echo "options psmouse proto=exps" | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/psmouse.conf

Reboot to test.

Source:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1388164

Works for me regardless of distro. Once you have /etc/modprobe.d/psmouse.conf created, you can copy it to any other distro you may have installed. Tested it with Mint 12 KDE and Chakra, so it should work with anything.

[jonhen]

Thanks claudecat that works for me, running 13 Maya Cinnamon on my 210 Mini.

[jtmoose]

I performed this (modprobe/psmouse) and got the right click to work but now I do not have the option to disable tap with the touchpad. How do I get that feature back. My wife is going to make me switch back to Windows if I can't disable it. We didn't have any problems until we got this HP Mini. I have been searching for an answer that works for a week now. I appreciate all your guys' help; I have been using the forums without posting for over a year now.