Touchpad / Keyboard issue with HP Envy X360

HCHTech

HCHTech

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This two year old Win10 laptop came in with a broken screen and broken hinge on one side. We ordered a new screen & top case since the hinge mooring points were destroyed. Got the new bits installed and when we booted it up, we had no keyboard or touchpad. External keyboard & mouse work fine. If we boot into the bios or our linux hardware testing suite, the keyboard & touchpad work just fine. Installed all available updates, loaded the latest BIOS, but still no keyboard or trackpad in Windows. Note that neither the keyboard or touchpad worked when we booted to Linux Mint, either.

HPs support downloads for this model do NOT include a chipset or touchpad driver. We did download and install the latest drivers that were offered there, however. NIC, WLAN, etc. We just finished a run with Snappy Driver Installer, and there were touchpad drivers on the list of offered udpates, but loading them has not fixed the problem. Device manager shows "this device is working properly" for both the keyboard & touchpad. In fact, there are no errors at all in device manager. We've also done an sfc scan and DISM online repair, to no avail.

Just googling the hardware IDs didn't really get us anywhere either. Grasping at straws, we swapped in a spare NVMe drive and tried to reinstall Windows but it didn't detect the drive, and the drive that is in the unit is one of those combo things: 32GB Optane & 512GB storage. I know we don't have any of those. We're looking to see if we can disable something in the BIOS to let us use a regular drive.

If the keyboard & trackpad DIDN'T work in the BIOS & Linux, I'd say this was hardware, but since they DO work in the BIOS and Linux, it HAS to be drivers, right? I'm not sure where else to go here. We're working our way through older drivers with Snappy Driver, but so far no joy there, either.

The one thought I have is that since this is a convertible, maybe the computer thinks it is in tablet mode when it's not. Windows is NOT in tablet mode, but it might be something to do with the hardware sending that signal that the screen is rotated around when in fact it is not. We tried disabling tablet mode altogether with a registry entry and disabling the Intel Sensor Array, something like that. That didn't help.

Can anyone think of anything I haven't?
 
Make sure the OS is completely up to date. There was a problem with a Win10 update a few years ago that caused the issue you're talking about on some laptops especially HP brand, it was fixed a week later with a subsequent update.

And do a BIOS update as well.
 
We tried doing a fresh install on a new SSD, but it wasn't seen by the BIOS or the installer. I'm sure there is a setting in there somewhere to control that, but my guy said he didn't find it when looking. We'll take another run at it tomorrow. I've never seen a combo Optane / storage drive, didn't even know that was a thing...
 
Latest update. If we do a fresh install on a new SSD without internet (by manually adding in the RST drivers as suggested), then the keyboard works but not the touchpad. If we then give it internet, after a few minutes, the touchpad starts working (presumably because it loaded a driver), but then in another 5 minutes or so, both keyboard and touchpad no longer work. So back to drivers. Even IF we find an older driver that works, Windows will eventually update it (5 minutes after the customer gets it home and connects to the internet most likely) and it will break again.

I'm thinking we need to document the exact driver that is being used during the 5 minutes when it is working, then load THAT driver onto the original installation of Windows, then force in that registry key to stop drivers from updating:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\DriverSearching

..just to get it off our bench. Then, as a final step, block that customer's number and email on our systems. :p
 
What about Windows 11? That might work better and you can argue about compatibility as the need. If the client really hates Windows 11 you can load shells like Start11 and change things with the Winaero Tweaker to make it look and function more like Windows 10.
 
Same $hit in a fresh install of Windows 11, I'm sad to report. Also found THIS forum post and THIS forum post from folks with the same unit and same problem. Unfortunately disabling the Intel Integrated Sensor Solution device didn't help in our case. My clever idea of identifying the driver in place during the 5-minute period after a fresh install where things work also did not work, the only driver shown is the generic Microsoft mouse driver from 2006. Once it quits working, there is a Synaptics driver shown in device management, but disabling that doesn't help and no different drivers we've found help either.

Because the screen was physically broken we did not power this unit up when we took it in - we should have, although still, this problem seems clearly to be a driver issue, so whether it was happening or not before we touched it seems irrelevant.
 
Have the HP Support Assistant AND the Intel Driver & Support Assistant both been installed and allowed to "do their things?"


Intel has been churning out driver updates at an absolutely blinding pace compared to what has happened historically, and it doesn't seem that they're being particularly proactive about distributing those updated drivers to the OEMs or else the OEMs are not being particularly proactive about getting them on their Drivers pages and downloading through their "service station" software.
 
britechguy said:
Have the HP Support Assistant AND the Intel Driver & Support Assistant both been installed and allowed to "do their things?"
Click to expand...
Yes - did not help. We tried that as part of our shotgun approach of "doing everything we could think of relating to drivers."

However, reflashing the current BIOS (which I believe is the 3rd time this was done as part of this repair), has apparently fixed the problem. Of course there were no errors in the previous flashes, and we used the same downloaded file, so I don't have an explanation, but I'm glad it's fixed.

I think the only thing we learned from this experience is that "sometimes, you get jobs like this" - haha. I think my tech has a little touch of PTSD - definitely a little eroding of his confidence in his own skillset.
 
HCHTech said:
Yes - did not help. We tried that as part of our shotgun approach of "doing everything we could think of relating to drivers."

However, reflashing the current BIOS (which I believe is the 3rd time this was done as part of this repair), has apparently fixed the problem. Of course there were no errors in the previous flashes, and we used the same downloaded file, so I don't have an explanation, but I'm glad it's fixed.

I think the only thing we learned from this experience is that "sometimes, you get jobs like this" - haha. I think my tech has a little touch of PTSD - definitely a little eroding of his confidence in his own skillset.
Click to expand...
Some machines are smoking piles o'sh-t. That Intel Sensor appears to be crap. I've seen reports for all the major PC makers on it.
 
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