Dave, I’m not sure what happened, but my PC touchscreen seems wonky and it reads my touches as being about a 1/2″ off from where I am actually touching the screen. It’s very odd! Is there a way to fix or recalibrate the screen?
Touchscreens are marvelous things, and we’ve all become quite used to touching our devices to control them. Imagine those old phones where you had to push actual buttons to make phone calls. For that matter, imagine phones where you made phone calls! 🙂
The challenge is if the touchscreen fails or if it, as you’re experiencing, gets out of calibration. It can be incredibly frustrating to touch a spot on the screen just to have the system identify a different point – or, worse, a different button or control – as where you touched. Sometimes when things get out of calibration you might be looking at a hardware fix, but as a first step you can definitely try the built-in Windows calibration tool. It’s a bit crude but might well get everything reset as needed!
CONTROL PANELS: TABLET PC SETTINGS
First step is to launch Settings (aka Control Panels, if you’re an old school Windows person). Then go to “Hardware and Sound“:
Since your computer has a touchscreen, it’s considered a “tablet” by Windows, so you should see “Tablet PC Settings”. Click to choose that one (or you can try tapping on your screen, but… well… 🙂
If your screen is completely ignoring all touches, then you can try the “Setup…” button in “Configure”, which will show this on the screen:
That’s not a calibration, but it might fix a completely unresponsible screen.
RECALIBRATE YOUR TOUCHSCREEN
To actually recalibrate your touchscreen involves some low-level hardware interaction by the software. Start by tapping on “Calibrate…” on the same Control Panel we saw earlier.
As long as yours indicates “Verified publisher: Microsoft Windows” you’re safe to proceed. Tap on “Yes“.
Now the fun begins. The screen will gain a double frame on the outer 0.5” of the display, making 8 vertices on both the top and bottom of the screen. Then it’ll superimpose a black “X” over the specific spot you need to tap.
To start, though, it’ll explain:
Then you’ll have the first “X” show up. It’s subtle so don’t be surprised if you have to look closely before you notice it, particularly with the spots in the very corners…
This is the sixth calibration point shown above: The very top left corner was #1, then the spot maybe a half-inch further to the right was #2, then #3 and #4 were on the top right corner of the screen, then back here for #5 and the current spot: #6.
Tap each spot as precisely as you can for the best result. You have a total of 16 taps for a full calibration, so it should only take a minute or two. Still, take your time to be as precise as possible.
When you’re done Windows will ask if you want to save the new calibration:
Tap on “Yes” to proceed and you’re done. Now, try tapping various spots on your screen to see if things are better. Hopefully that fixed the issue, but if not, you might need some hardware assistance.
Pro Tip: I’ve been writing about Windows since the beginning. Please check out my extensive Windows help area for lots of useful tutorials and how-to guides while you’re visiting! Thanks.