Resolved MB Pro early 2011 trackpad

[robertorossi@62]

Hello everybody.
I bought a MB Pro 13" i5 early 2011 for very little change.
the battery is cooked (so I removed it and now the MBP works connected to the network via the battery charger), a memory bank does not work (the upper one, the modification that many show on youtube is useless).
i loaded High Sierra 10.13.6 and it seems to work.
everything except the trackpad.
ie the trackpad works but not "touch" but I have to click.
if I start the MBP from an external disk always with High Sierra 10.13.6 the trackpad works as it should.
the external disk is not an SSD but the disk that was mounted in a 2009 Mac Mini.
in system preferences I can not find a solution to the problem.
thanks in advance for any suggestion.

Rob

 

[iMacDragon]

It should be tap to click or some such option in trackpad settings. At least that's what it's called on current macos version.

Also note, if running off charger alone with no battery, it is probably not running at full performance and limiting cpu speed.

 

[B S Magnet]

Hello everybody.
I bought a MB Pro 13" i5 early 2011 for very little change.
the battery is cooked (so I removed it and now the MBP works connected to the network via the battery charger), a memory bank does not work (the upper one, the modification that many show on youtube is useless).
i loaded High Sierra 10.13.6 and it seems to work.
everything except the trackpad.
ie the trackpad works but not "touch" but I have to click.
if I start the MBP from an external disk always with High Sierra 10.13.6 the trackpad works as it should.
the external disk is not an SSD but the disk that was mounted in a 2009 Mac Mini.
in system preferences I can not find a solution to the problem.
thanks in advance for any suggestion.

Rob

I have the same Mac running 10.13.6.

Open System Preferences > Trackpad and select the Point & Click tab. Verify that Tap to click (Tap with one finger) is selected:

You should then be good to go.

 

[robertorossi@62]

I have the same Mac running 10.13.6.

Open System Preferences > Trackpad and select the Point & Click tab. Verify that Tap to click (Tap with one finger) is selected:

View attachment 2236940

You should then be good to go.

if I had that option in system preferences I wouldn't have asked for enlightenment.
I can only set a BT trackpad via system preferences and not the MB Pro trackpad.
anyway thanks for the try.
same problem for the keyboard: through the system preferences I can only set a BT keyboard.
operating system downloaded from "mama" Apple, Italian language.

Rob

 

[B S Magnet]

if I had that option in system preferences I wouldn't have asked for enlightenment.
I can only set a BT trackpad via system preferences and not the MB Pro trackpad.
anyway thanks for the try.

That’s… honestly surprising for me to hear. (Then again, I have never used Bluetooth pointer devices or keyboards on my 2011 13-inch MBP.)

If you wouldn’t mind, could you navigate to that Point & Click tab once more on System Preferences, then use the keyboard combination, Cmd-Ctrl-Shift-4 to “draw” a rectangle over the System Preferences area? (Your pointer will temporarily become a “+”; next, with your thumb holding down the clicked touchpad, use your index finger to “draw” a rectangle over the area you want to copy to the clipboard; release your thumb from the click once you’ve selected what you want to copy; now, in your reply, you should be able to Cmd-V paste that highlighted area into your reply.)

There is, from every indication you’ve noted, a preference setting somewhere which is overriding your ability to control the behaviour of your onboard, built-in trackpad. I’d like to help find it with you, if I’m able.

(Also, for sake of this troubleshooting: if Bluetooth reception is on, go up to the menubar and shut it off):

 

[robertorossi@62]

honestly it surprised me too.
my 17" i7 /2011/ High Sierra, has the possibility to set the trackpad from the system preferences.
when I get home after work I'll try to tinker with it a bit more.
Thanks for your help, much appreciated.

 

[B S Magnet]

honestly it surprised me too.
my 17" i7 /2011/ High Sierra, has the possibility to set the trackpad from the system preferences.
when I get home after work I'll try to tinker with it a bit more.
Thanks for your help, much appreciated.

If, after you check things later on, you’re running into the same issues, there might be another, more involved workaround — but hopefully it won’t be needed.

 

[robertorossi@62]

two screenshot.

 

[B S Magnet]

two screenshot.

Thanks for doing that.

OK. It appears this MBP has had a Magic Trackpad associated with it at some time in the past.

I have an idea:

In System Preferences, open the Bluetooth pane. It will list any devices/computers/phones/etc. which have been paired previously with this laptop.

Now, turn Bluetooth “ON”.

Next, find the “Magic Trackpad” item in the Bluetooth “Devices” list and click the circled-❌ button next to that item. This will remove it from the list.

This means the system won’t be looking for that device in the future (unless you, later on, decide to pair one to it). Hopefully, this also means the Trackpad preference pane won’t be looking for a Magic Trackpad, either.

 

[robertorossi@62]

there is no Magic Trackpad in the BT panel.
unfortunately.
that would have been too good.
however I did a "clean install", I think there shouldn't be any leftovers.

 

[robertorossi@62]

other anomaly: SSD initialized as APFS but not partitioned.
the 2 disks that you see in he attached image have the same size in Gb.

 

[B S Magnet]

there is no Magic Trackpad in the BT panel.
unfortunately.
that would have been too good.
however I did a "clean install", I think there shouldn't be any leftovers.

When you did a clean install, was this a re-install of High Sierra over the previous High Sierra (which would preserve your home user folder), or was this a complete re-format of your internal SSD prior to a fresh, first-time install of High Sierra?

 

[robertorossi@62]

Complete re-format the internal SSD.
starting it from an external High Sierra drive everything works as it should.

at this point the most obvious solution seems to be to restart from Snow Leopard with Mac Recovery.

 

[B S Magnet]

Complete re-format the internal SSD.
starting it from an external High Sierra drive everything works as it should.

at this point the most obvious solution seems to be to restart from Snow Leopard with Mac Recovery.

Interesting.

Possibly the last thing I might try is to run a full clone of the external drive (whilst booted from the external drive) to the internal drive — in effect, making it an exact clone of the external boot environment on which you’re not having troubles. (I think the trouble is buried in some preference .plist in your user directory, or else a .plist in the /Library/ root-level directory). Grab Carbon Copy Cloner (it is shareware, but it’s consistently excellent for cloning volumes) and use that for a full clone.

But before you do that, let’s try one more thing:

In System Preferences, open Users & Groups. In there, click + to create a new user and give that user Adminitrator access:

Give it whatever name you want (consider a name/username worth keeping, in case this fix actually works):

Create user. Then, reboot.

Upon reboot, log in as the new user you just created. It’ll be a fresh, default-appearing desktop.

Next, open System Preferences > Trackpad and see whether you still have the “Magic Trackpad” issue.

If so, then I would go ahead and get Carbon Copy Cloner and clone the entire external High Sierra to the internal SSD — in effect, transplanting that version of High Sierra (which you know works just fine) to the internal drive. Afterwards, boot from the just-cloned internal drive.

 

[robertorossi@62]

negative result even with a new admin.

 

[B S Magnet]

negative result even with a new admin.

OK. Time to wipe the internal APFS partition with High Sierra on it and do a full clone (onto a new, internal APFS partition) using Carbon Copy Cloner (version 5.x). It’s more than worth the price to get the job done.

Before you do the wipe, copy over anything on the internal /Users/[yourlogin] directory you wish to save, onto the external /Users/[yourlogin] directory. You can also use and fine-tune Carbon Copy Cloner for this.

 

[robertorossi@62]

tonight CCC did its job and at dawn I restarted the MB Pro 13".
a moment of panic due to the slowness of the first boot and the first cries of the clone.
now it is working fine.

Thanks so much for your help and patience.

Rob

 

[B S Magnet]

tonight CCC did its job and at dawn I restarted the MB Pro 13".
a moment of panic due to the slowness of the first boot and the first cries of the clone.
now it is working fine.

Thanks so much for your help and patience.

Rob

That’s great news and I’m glad to hear it’s now working out for you.

My hypothesis was there was an errant or even corrupt .plist (preference setting) from which the Trackpad and/or Bluetooth prefPane was reading which was causing it to do that, but the amount of effort to track that down to solve — lest this was something one felt like searching for as a troubleshooting exercise — was probably not worth the time or energy to track down. Fortunately, you already had a working copy at the ready, which really removed a lot of the guesswork. What was most important here was to get a system working properly and without further headache.

---

As you’re new around here (and we’d love to have you stick around as new things come up along the way), there are a couple of things you can do to help close this thread. The first is to go back to the first posting you made on the thread. This will let you modify the title (which you’ve done), but instead of “the problem is solved”, there’s a little pull-down menu to the left called “prefix”; the bottom of that list has a label tag you can choose called “Resolved” which makes it easy to see on the forum page that a topic is closed.

The other, and entirely optional, is to let the person(s) who assisted on solving an issue to “like”/thumbs-up their post(s), which you can do by pressing the button at the lower right corner of their posts.

Let us know if you ever have any other questions!