How I Fixed Thinkpad Trackpoint Not Scrolling When Plugged In

On a ThinkPad T60, my dearly beloved TrackPoint, the little rubber thingy in the middle of the keyboard, was not scrolling stuff. But I think I found a solution.

I noticed one day that my TrackPoint was not working. Specifically speaking, moving the mouse cursor was working, but scrolling with TrackPoint was not working. If you know TrackPoints, you how to scroll, right? Press the middle mouse button above the Touchpad (TrackPad) and move the TrackPoint at the same time. It should scroll. But when this issue happens it does not work.

What Didn't Work

I was getting confused to why this might happen. I tried opening up the laptop, and disconnecting and reconnecting the keyboard connector. It worked at first, then it happened again.

I tried LTS version of Linux (Linux Libre LTS). It also worked for some time, but it started happening again.

The T60 machine was Librebooted. But Libreboot was not the problem. I found out that others are having similar issues on machines that are not Librebooted.

What Did Work

The solution was so simple! It turns out the problem was in the earthing / ground connection. So to solve the problem, I just touched the metal ports with my bare hands, waited for a minute or so and it worked like a charm!

Touching any port like the VGA and USB works fine! Amazing!

What's The Issue

Sometimes an off-brand power adapter is the cause. They don't have a proper grounding mechanism and it causes this issue.

See here for some more solutions if you do not like the one I provided.