Trackpad ghosting reasons? MPB13', Late 2013

[AppleEco]

Hi,

who can advise what the reasons for a ghosting track pad for above model is?

It started ghosting about at the time when I replaced my 512 SSD for a 2TB version from Aurora this June. The battery is in "Replace soon" condition, having 1088 cycles. At about the same time the fan started to get very loud and the MBP would get really hot. Something I never experienced before. It would even get hot when I pull it out of the bag from sleep mode. Something seems to be running. No heavy video/photo software is running.

iStats does not really show anything strange. Temperatures, the fan's RPM are all ok. SSD at 34. The CPU core1 can go up to 80.

I also tried other chargers and disconnecting it. No change.
It gets sometimes better when I close the lid and log in again. When the MBP is completly cold the trackpad works good. For a few min.

Any ideas? Should I replace the trackpad when I get a new battery (they ae both tightly glued, so seems to be better to do this at the same time)

thank you,
Marko

 

[AppleHaterLover]

My guess is that some flex cable was damaged when you replaced the SSD.

A second alternative is your battery is swollen and interfering with the trackpad.

 

[Audit13]

There should be no need to go near any cables when swapping out the SSD.

Could the battery swelling and putting pressure on the trackpad?

 

[Painter2002]

I agree with @AppleHaterLover and @Audit13, sounds like a chance your battery is expanding, or a small chance you damaged the cable when accessing the SSD. But given that you are at over 1000 cycles on the battery, there is a good chance it could be expanding and pressing up on the trackpad, giving ghost touches.

 

[DeltaMac]

I suspect that if you take the bottom cover off, then inspect your battery, you will see that at least some of the cells are not quite flat now, and the battery swelling is enhanced when it heats up a bit. If it does that, then it may be close to a catastrophic failure. Worked on one a couple of years ago, where the battery suddenly pushed the trackpad completely out of the case. That result happened after a full discharge/recharge cycle, when the owner let the battery go fully dead. Charged overnight, and the trackpad area was visibly distorted the next morning, with one corner of the trackpad sticking out the case.

It happens...
I suggest replacing the battery --- sooner, rather than later...

 

[AppleEco]

Thanks a lot to all of you for your reply.

-I'am pretty sure that I have not touched the cables when I swaped the SSD. But of course I can never be sure.
-Yes I want to replace the battery really,really soon. But I'am afraid that with all the hotness and high fan RPM at the moment I will just kill another battery really fast without fixing the root cause. BTW: Especially Chrome and firefox browser usages are causing really bad problems. I completly stopped using them when I can (for work sometimes I have to). I made it a bit better.

-From what I saw last time the battery is not swolen at all. Looks pretty normal flat to me. Unfortunatly I don't have a screwdriver on hand and can only check again in 2 weeks. I will update you then. In the repair store they told me that the battery can actually not really swell up that much to impact the touch pad in this model. Would you agree with this?

thanks,
Marko

 

[1096bimu]

Does the ghosting only happen when plugged in? Because that could happen with improperly grounded power adaptors. And it can be solved by simply touching anywhere on the metal shell while using the trackpad.

 

[DeltaMac]

I think you should also tell us what you mean be "ghosting" on a trackpad. I have a mental image of a trackpad that is very unstable, and produces lots of cursor movement, perhaps even without touching the trackpad. (moving your finger off the trackpad, and the cursor moves slightly, or jerks to positions, not well controlled by your input.