Monday, April 16, 2007

Touchpad finally working again after a Suspend/Resume in Feisty

As suggested by fellow user skipper (who I thank very much) there is a way to make the touchpad work after a suspend/resume.

The solution is a downgrade of the BIOS of the laptop to version 1.10. The problem, in fact, seems to be related to the two latest versions of the BIOS (v1.19 and v1.20). Anyone who does not necessarily need one of these two later BIOS versions, should downgrade to v1.10 to make suspend work.

If your SI1520 does not mount an Intel Core Duo (Yonah) D0 stepping processor (which means mainly those CPUs coded T2x00) you can downgrade to version 1.10. Otherwise you'll have to stick with a BIOS version >= 1.17 and with no touchpad after resume. :-(

v1.19 is officially the initial BIOS for Windows Vista 32bit, so downgrading could bring up problems with Vista. I couldn't find anything wrong in my brief test, but I don't plan to be using Vista much, so that's not so important to me.

Please leave a comment with your experiences with this matter, as it can help other fellow SI1520 owners. Thanks.

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8 comments:

Erol said...

This is no solution, since older bios doesn't support CPU's that are currently available for this model.

We should wait for a proper solution.

Sciamano said...

As I said, this workaround works with those models equipped with CPU's coded "Merom" and not with those coded "Yonah". My CPU is a Merom, and this workaround works.

Erol said...

I've just downgraded bios to v1.10, touchpad after suspend works like a charm.

Sciamano said...

Good to hear it worked for you too.

Unknown said...

Hi. I just got my new Amilo SI1520 T5600 and the touch pad does not work. I didn't do anything and Siemens didn't have an answer either. Will downgrading the bios to v1.10 help me and if so how do you do it? Other than some HTML that I need for ebay, I know next to nothing about computers. Everything on my computer is also in German if that's important (I'm bilingual so you can write in English or German) I'd be very grateful for any help on this matter!

Sciamano said...

Martin, I did not understand one thing: the touchpad does not work at all, or it does not work after suspend/resume?
If it's the second, the solution is in the blog's post you left the comment to. If it's the first, it might simply be defected/broken.

Anonymous said...

How do I figure out what kind of CPU I use?

Sciamano said...

@Tobias, it should have been written somewhere, maybe on the box?
Anyway, you should be able to figure it out using some kind of "System Information" programs. What OS are you running?