Touchpad is very hot and not responsive

Framework Laptop 13 Linux
1

Yesterday, I came back to my laptop after it had been hibernating. I had an external dock hooked up to it (which I usually don’t), which includes a USB-C power supply from my macbook.

My laptop initially would not turn on. I unplugged the dock, and it still would not turn on. I then hooked up my regular USB-c power supply, and it turned on and resumed from hibernate like normal.

However, I noticed my touchpad was completely unresponsive and after a few minutes, the center of the touchpad became very hot (too hot to touch!). Restarting did not help.

I can now seem some dis-colorization in the middle of the touchpad. The touchpad still gets extremely hot after just a few minutes, and is still unresponsive. Everything else appears to be working as expected.

My first concern was that there is something wrong with the battery. and it was the battery underneath that was overheating, however, I took the keyboard/touchpad off, turned on the machine, and again the touch pad gets hot, the battery was cool to the touch.

My plan is to purchase a replacement touchpad, but I am wondering if this may be indicative of some other issues.

What do you all think? should I be worried about anything else (like replacing the battery)?

Which Linux distro are you using?

Fedora 41

Which BIOS version are you using?

InsydeH20 Rev. 5.0 HFW30.03.05

Which Framework Laptop 13 model are you using? (AMD Ryzen™ 7040 Series, Intel® Core™ Ultra Series 1, 13th Gen Intel® Core™ , 12th Gen Intel® Core™, 11th Gen Intel® Core™)

12th Gen Intel® Core™

2

In the meantime, is it possible to disconnect the touchpad without disconnecting the keyboard? Or what about disconnecting the touchpad and keyboard, but still having a working power button?

This would at least let me use my laptop with an external keyboard/mouse.

3

The battery management will disable the battery long before the battery is enough to make the touchpad extremely hot. I suspect some short circuit is going on in the touchpad. Remove it before it fries the battery.

Meanwhile you can use an external keyboard, there’s a switch at the upper right of the mainboard, use that to switch on and use external keyboard & mouse to switch off.

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4

I got my replacement touchpad. It was a quick and easy replacement, and everything is working great again!

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