Dell XPS 15 Touchpad hangs — Fixed

I got a Dell XPS 15 Laptop recently. It is a thing of beauty, except when the Touchpad just stops responding, and only click-and-drag mode seems to work, so I have to restart the Computer to get it working again.

Fix — Using Device Manager

Restarting every time is a terrible solution, so I began to check what else I could do to fix this.

I found that disabling and enabling the “HID-compliant Touch Pad” device in Device Manager, fixed the problem every time.

Of course, you’d need the Keyboard to do this, so you want to know how to use the Tab and Arrow keys to navigate controls on a Window.

Fix — Using PowerShell

If you’re comfortable with PowerShell, You might want to write a script like:

function global:touchpad()
{
    Disable-PnpDevice -InstanceId "HID\SYNA2393&COL02\5&10464366&0&0001" -Confirm:$false
    Enable-PnpDevice -InstanceId "HID\SYNA2393&COL02\5&10464366&0&0001" -Confirm:$false
}

touchpad.ps1 view raw

And have it available globally by adding it to the $env:UserProfile/Documents/WindowsPowerShell/profile.ps1 file.

Then when it happens, you can run PowerShell as Administrator, and run touchpad to fix the problem.

Enjoy!