Thinkpad X1 Carbon (5th Gen, 2017) - Touchpad behaviour changed / degraded a few days ago

Question

Drag-and-drop (e.g. for selecting sth) is not acting as before; fear some (automatic) update might have messed it up. Any ideas how to fix / trouble-shoot / work-around? Really irritating...

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Further details:

1. Same (new/irritating) behaviour in Win10-Guest in VirtualBox.
2. Old behaviour: Could physically "click" / "depress" the corner of the touchpad with one finger and "drag" with another finger to select ("drag-and-drop").
3. New behaviour: Can (double-)"tap" (but not (de-)press) to click-and-drag to select.
4. Also: Reverts to old behaviour every so often but not reliably (making the experience even worse).
5. This not only pertains to "selecting" sth but also drag-and-dropping / moving windows. Very cumbersome. This cannot be intended behaviour; therefore I am inclined to think this is some kind of bug / regression.

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Settings (unchanged):

Answer 1

I believe I've been encountering the same problem on my Thinkpad X1 Carbon 5th Gen Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. For me, when I shut the lid of my laptop and then reopen it, the trackpad still works, but two-finger scrolling does not work and click-and-drag does not work.

I noticed it start about a week ago after a few updates including a Thinkpad firmware update through Software Update. I'm not sure if that is the culprit, because I got other updates around that time. I have not figured out a way to roll back the firmware update to test if that is the problem.

My current workaround comes from this question. I find that resetting my mouse with modprobe psmouse resolves the issue until I shut the lid again.

Create a script with the following command and save it in your home directory with a name that ends in .sh such as touchpad_reset.sh:

#!/bin/bash
sudo modprobe -r psmouse
sudo modprobe psmouse

Then, make it executable with:

chmod +x touchpad_reset.sh

Then assign a shortcut to that script. First, go to Settings > Devices > Keyboard and scroll to the bottom. Click the + sign and enter a Name (e.g. 'Touchpad Reset'). Then enter the following Command:

gnome-terminal -x ./touchpad_reset.sh

Then assign a shortcut. I use Ctrl + Super + R.

Now, whenever your trackpad stops working enter that shortcut and a terminal window will open up asking for a password. Enter the password and your trackpad should start working again.

I don't find that workaround to be a suitable permanent answer, but hopefully somebody else has a better solution.