Einleitung

The Toshiba Portege Z30 is a great lightweight laptop; however one issue that reoccurs is that with age, the blue pointer stick in the middle of the keyboard begins to move the mouse on it’s own accord. The option to disable it does exist in the touchpad settings; however my experience is doing this has a knock-on effect of making the touchpad operation erratic and unresponsive. So here is a fail-safe way to disable the pointer stick permenantly and restore proper operation to the touchpad. It also has the benefit of keeping the mouse buttons in operation, which are disabled when you disable the pointer stick in the settings.

All you will need is a Philips screwdriver and a pair of scissors. We’re going DIY on this one!

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    • Take your Philips screwdriver to the screws on the base of the laptop (not forgetting the screws under the rubber feet, bottom right).

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    • Disconnect the battery with multicoloured wires, and use your screwdriver to remove the 4 screws holdigin it in place. Remove the battery.

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    • Turn your attention to the keyboard connector pictured, held in place by the plastic locks. Delicately unclip the locks on either side and pull the ribbon from the socket.

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    • As you can see, the ribbon is divided into two parts, with a small and large section. The smaller section is what we're interested in - this recieves signals from the pointer stick on the keyboard.

    • Take your pair of scissors and make a cut across the smaller 4 lined section, approximately 1cm from the end. This will cut the pointer stick connection from the motherboard, and ensure the ribbon cable still correctly fits in the socket.

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    • Success! The modified keyboard ribbon cable is now ready to be re-fitted in the socket, and the pointer stick has now been permanently disabled. No more wandering pointer!

Abschluss

As ever, follow these instructions in reverse order in order to re-assemble your device.

Laurie McKinlay

Mitglied seit: 23/04/18

362 Reputation

8 Kommentare

No option to disable the AccuPoint in my version of Ubuntu, so this should work a treat. Thanks for putting this guide together. :)

Brangor Garbagio -

That worked great, thanks again. :) I didn’t cut the ribbon cable, but cut the tape between the keyboard and accupoint cables and slid out the accupoint one. Tomayto tomahto, really.

Brangor Garbagio -

It works!!! We have suffered for many years with that issue, switching off the touchpad with the FN+F9, but this stopped working for a some reason. We tried everything soft-wise, but the old drivers kept returning, and the accupoint kept drifting. At some point it was enough, and we decided to go hard way-your way, but it was quite easy! Just to mention: to unlock the ribbon cable, you need to push the grey lockers against the arrow, towards yourself if you are positioning the laptop as on the picture. We had a struggle with that at first, resulting in the keyboard stopping to respond, but then we did it right. Now, everything is fine! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!

Lina Yara -

Thank you so much.

This fixed a really annoying issue

anonymous 2612 -

Great, thanks!

Seems to be a very common issue… I use windows, and it’s possible to deactivate it via software, just open the tool form the menu on the bottom right side (where the clock is) and look for the touchpad like app, then look for accupoint section and disable it.

I suffer also from once-in-a-while unresponsive trackpad. it stops working fro a few seconds (buttons do work) and if i frenetically move my fingers over it, starts working again for a couple of hours… any clue? I’m thinking on retiring this laptop due to it, but it has been a very good companion…

poseido -

The unresponsive trackpad is a common issue for me too. I just tried this solution, which seems to be working so far: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnzjLpvR... - note that I added a piece of tape (as indicated in one of the comments below the video) instead of cutting the blue tape.

Seb -

Excellent tutorial thanks it fixed my issue perfectly, the touchpad responds well and I can use the mouse buttons which I love - much better than disabling accupoint in settings

For my part I actually unglued the pointer stick section from the blue tape and just slid it back without pointer stick connector; perfect for me

Thanks again

Someone probably -

Finally! I got rid of this annoying problem! thank you for the guide.

Arash Akhavan -