Win 10 and ghost touches (touchscreen)

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Hello,

I recently got a touchscreen laptop ( Panasonic cf-ax3e ), and initially had an installation of 1709. Obviously it updated itself to 1803 ( and then I put it on metered ).

Now the issue (and I think it’s something not so new in general) : randomly (can be after a day or such) there are multiple ghost touches on the screen.
I’ve done a change in the startup power options as recommended, but it has not solved the issue so I was wondering if anyone had this issue and actually found a reliable solution.
The microsoft hid touchscreen driver apparently seems being the latest available ( trying to update it doesn’t result in finding newer versions ) and the Panasonic driver is prevented from installing since it’s considered ancient (released as companion during 2014/2015).

Anyway suggestions ? ( I’ve noticed suspicious MTConfig errors )

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It might be an issue with the driver or 1809, but it could also be a hardware malfunction, perhaps when something in there gets warm.  It’s not uncommon for manufacturing defects to reveal themselves when a device is new.  If you have a bootable USB drive that can be used to boot into any environment that enables the touchscreen, that might help narrow it down, though if it takes a day or two to manifest, that would be a long, boring wait.

Some things that may work would be WinRE/WinPE, as used by the Windows install/recovery media, various backup programs, etc., or Linux (any distro’s live USB, and also various backup programs use this).

I’ve never had a touchscreen on a PC, so I don’t know if they usually work or not in preboot environments.  I know my Acer laptop’s touchpad in advanced mode does not work in Macrium Reflect’s rescue USB, which is based on WinPE, presumably because the installation doesn’t contain drivers for the i2c bus the touchpad uses (which I could probably fix if I wanted to, but it’s easier just to plug in a mouse).

 

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

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Yes, if the UEFI (or BIOS?) supports using the touchscreen. HP’s diagnostics support the using touchscreen like a single button mouse. (Bonus fact for readers: There is support for wireless mice!) Windows 10 recovery does support using a touchscreen with virtual keyboard and also wireless mice.

The touchscreen controller has it’s own software which usually presents itself as device, USB is common. It should be that only things needed is bus support, the code for the touchscreen controller to be enumerated on the computers various buses, and the supporting code to use the touchscreen as a pointing device.

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Yes, this one works even in Bios mode ( without the need to turn on uefi ), it has even an onscreen keyboard that you can turn on/off on the bios pages.

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By what I could find out, this is a windows induced issue that showed up from 2014, more or less ( as in I saw people complaining about it starting from that moment ), and matches videos I found. So while it could be hw, my sensation is that it’s 99.999% software.
(and the diagnostic suite present in the bios fully validated the touchscreen controller etc as ok)

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#1 suggestion: Return it!

You can wrangle with the problem, if you like, but it’s easiest to give it back to the folks who made it…

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uhm, used unit
Also it happens in various surface from 2 to 4. it’s an os issue linked to win10, not a defect… this I’m quite sure of

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Is the driver written by Microsoft or is it a Panasonic driver repackaged by Microsoft?

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Or a driver by the maker of the touchscreen module redistributed by Panasonic…

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

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Yes! You are observant, that may be the case here.

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Seriously goofy weird Panasonic has no upgrades for the touchscreen but some other for Windows 10 1803. You may not like me for this but maybe a touchscreen driver might be in all of these 971 update catalog results.

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Okay, I did not notice any thing about any Panasonic touchscreen in the huge catalog driver list. Does Panasonic make the touchscreen hardware?

One last advanced esoteric method to try for finding a different better driver is…

1. Loading Device Manager (ignore that you are not an administrator)
2. Find the Touchscreen device
3. Double-click to open the device properties dialog.
4. Go to the Details tab which will show lots of information
5. Find the Device id(s) string and copy it to the clipboard.
6. put that Device Id information into your favorite search engine.
7. Carefully peruse results noting that there are (possibly) dangerous driver download (and other) sites which may claim to have what you want. You will see junk results or maybe nothing at all!

Lastly and this is something important, You can do all of this searching and not obtain a satisfactory result. It should not cause harm to try testing the touchscreen with a live Linux distribution as Ascaris suggested, but from personal experience with different hardware I have to concur with your assessment that Windows 10 is your real problem.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Ascaris

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EETI Brand Touch digitizer, for what I can see.

PID_7924 , REV_1701 , Col01

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What is the VID? If it is made by EETI then here are drivers, http://www.eeti.com.tw/drivers_Win.html

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Very bad news there are eGalaxTouch driver Normal Versions* somewhere and the one available now only supports pid_0001, so your touchscreen will work like a generic mouse or not at all? Is the Vendor ID usb\vid_0eef? These first four drivers are all I can find in Microsoft’s update catalog, those are for also for usb\vid_0eef&pid_0001.

Booting with a live Linux distribution would help very much, as the lsusb program can divulge important information, also this USB id list could help you to find the right vendor.

* (You have wait for a new release to see if it’s a “Normal Version”? Why the %^#$ do companies remove support and call it a feature?)

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Vid is 0eef , but pid is 7924.

Note also that the driver on the maker site is a single touch device driver.

This is a ten touch screen fieldwork compliant

Edit :

eGalaxTouch EXC7904-17v01 aka projected capacitive, thus either laptop oem driver or built-in win10.

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The Windows 10 1607 Human Interface driver works fine, my projected capacitance touchscreen controller is an eGalaxTouch EXC3000-0367.

So some other possibilities…

1. Windows 10 1803 has a broken HID touchscreen driver.
2. MTConfig is broken. (What do the errors messages say?)
3. Have you gotten any moisture around the screen, maybe on the touchscreen cable connection that has caused corrosion?
4. The companion driver or/and sensing chips are failing?
5. Do you want to try the single touch touchscreen driver to see if the ghosting stops?

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mmmmm (but consider it may work perfectly with the exc3000 and at the same time not work perfectly with the exc7000. 2 different chips, and the 2 companion chips each uses are also different)

1) possible. if I read a few things around correctly, people with this issue are all on a win10 version older than 1607.
2) An attempt to configure the input mode of a multitouch device failed
3) definitely not
4) the low level tests all pass. panasonic is quite decent with their business line and toughbooks
5) happens randomly and occasionally. By example now it was a week it didn’t happen, and it “just” briefly happened after I’ve installed a Panasonic utility to extend the power plans. couple of suspends and it vanished

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Again about the less likely possibility of moisture ingress… do you know the machine’s history, where and who and what it went through?

Now that is curious about power management, do you get this extraneous input (ghosting) immediately when changing power profiles? Do you also notice fresh MTConfig errors?

Perhaps the chips do not like being directed to change their power states. After finding the right USB Input Device entry maybe you could deselect the check box for “Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power“?

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Sorry for the delay.

Mah, coincidence or not, happened just after finishing installing that system extension (and the new power plan kicked automatically in). Changing plans now causes nothing, including no strange logs.

“allow the computer to turn off…” is deselected for all those devices by default, and greyed out.

Back to the first question, sadly I don’t know the particular history of the device aside that it comes directly from a panasonic business unit (alongside other hundreds), has a kind of custom keyboard (french words, but english enter, euro symbol, qwerty, to say it in short), a near new mb (1440 hours) and the lid quite a bit “worn out” at the corners

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Okay thanks, your description reads like a grade A-/B+ machine so it supposed to be cosmetically damaged and fine internal condition. Honestly I’m out of ideas for now – maybe the new software fixed the glitch by keeping the hardware powered all the time!

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Well, actually it was powered all the time from the start ( I remember I peeked ).

I’m out of ideas, too. I should look if there’s anywhere a detailed teardown of everything, including hinges and the lcd bezel.
Pics of the mb of a cf-ax3 (or ax2, since is identical aside the cpu and screen kind) are easily found, but a full teardown, especially of the lid, no.
I’ve spotten the lid magnesium bezel as spare part on ebay, and the image suggests that there are 4 screws hidden, but also that the lcd may be taped to it. If it’s really taped, any disassembling would mean a new lcd because I suspect it would break… like changing the kb ( taped too ) results in a bent kb ( the one removed ) and made unusable.

This quirk aside, it’s really a nice machine (just I don’t understand why they put just 4gb of ram. It was 1700 euro, new… for that price they should have offered 8gb, and 16gb in the rare premium models, instead of 4gb and 8 in the rare premium ) even if it lacks an active pen.

The keyboard on it it’s also a big mistery, not managed to find out which locale is, and every single person I’ve spoken with is out of ideas. And Panasonic has no archive with keyboards dlls

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Ah, before opening your computer make sure it is a software problem. Certainly it can worse for people that may have to risk going to dodgy site to get a service manual. Maybe certain sellers may provide instructions for replacement of the part.

Yeah RAM was much cheaper back then, but 4 GB on one module was expensive back then not like now. 4GB modules are ubiquitous like, like 1366×768 TN panel screens still sold as an option for laptops.

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Still Mazzinia , but I’ve somehow forgot the password & got temp locked out due to trying too much to test combos… erm.

Well, it’s not a really ancient machine ( 2014 ), if we think about it the Thinkpad x220 was allowing 16gb max ram ( and was older )…  The issue here is that the ram is soldered ( in dual channel mode luckily ), so it cannot be improved. And while I agree that 4GB is cheaper than 8GB, at the end the bill goes to the buyer. I’m maybe naive but I think that if the base price was 200 higher but with 8gb of ram, they would have sold it as well as making the 4gb model to sell.

About opening up, don’t worry… I was not planning to do that but just to find ideally very detailed screenshots of the parts and of the screen itself disassembled, to be able to evaluate possible sensors etc. By example, I found a good detailed image of the cable, and seems quite protected by a “2nd skin”, so there’s a double insulation, and the external looks very sturdy too. I don’t think water could leak in there without first hitting the inverter board, killing it.

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I’m starting to think it’s an hw problem.
Lets say i open the screen to 180 degrees TO the full 360 degrees to lock in tablet mode : 0 issues, touch works as it should, and tablet mode kicks in when supposed to.

But now I’m experiencing that weird condition from closed to 160/170 degrees.
What I’ve noticed with repeated stress tests AND the hw device manager opened + keeping an eye on the status of the device with refreshes is :

The touch “may” not work at all, but the device is present and the status says “no error”
The touch may work normally
The touch may have ghost touches, but the device is present and the status says “no error”
The device may vanish from the list of devices ( touchscreen + 2 slave hids )
The device may say “disconnected” ( rare )

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It is quite possible a wire or more has broken inside the cable.

-or-

Maybe one of the touchscreen chips might have a loose leg (hopefully they didn’t use a ball grid array chip); If Panasonic specified use of lead-free solder it can more easily develop cracks or break in two.

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I would discard the cable as broken, otherwise why would be 100% reliable once doing the biggest movement.
The chips are apparently all on the board, nothing is on the lcd side, so I would not think about solder there.

Also , laptop placed fix for 7 hours and turned on, touch working normally…. right now at the 7th hour there were 2 cases of ghost touches. This makes me think it could be something else.

Also yesterday it happened when the usb keyboard was unplugged ( with nothing else moving or shifting ).
And there’s the time when it happened just after the installation of the extended power scheme kicked in.

Dunno…

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Still cannot think of another possible cause for that error, except if there might be any modules attached to the screen.

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I “think” there are none. The camera, mics , light sensor, home button, all are on a separate line I think
I have no idea where the gyroscope and acceleration sensors are

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By what I can see is a microsoft driver. The panasonic one is from 2015 or 2014 and 1803 prevents its installation.

Panasonic removed a lot of drivers the further the win10 version got. So at the moment for 1803 there are practically only 2 bios updates ( spectre + vpro )

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