Resolved touchpad not working

The last few weeks I have had problems getting my touchpad to respond to my touch. I typically use a USB mouse (which has been working fine). But the last few weeks, whether the mouse is connected or not, the touchpad won't let me move the cursor at all (I do have the option to disable the touchpad when the USB mouse is connected). I went to the Toshiba forums (it is a Toshiba laptop) but the only recommendation was to disable the driver.

Steps I have already taken: I updated the driver from the toshiba site, and then rebooted, but the problem remained. I had Windows uninstall the driver for the touchpad, and then rebooted, and it worked immediately after the reboot (and after Windows reinstalled the driver), but right now (the first time that I have disconnected the USB mouse after the disabling of the driver) the touchpad isn't working again.

Any suggestions?

 

On my Toshiba, if I hit Fn + F9, that toggles the touchpad on and off. Did you try that hot key combo?

 

That did it. Thanks a lot. YOu know now that I think about it, I recall some recent time that those "flash cards" (in Toshibas, you hit the Fn key and you get them) appeared on the top of my screen. I didn't want them there, they disappeared soon enough, but at that point I must have inadvertently triggered that function.

I think its nice that Toshiba is thinking about its customers, but really, I'm not sure why they went to the trouble. Isn't this what the Device manager and control panel are for? I don't recall the last time I inadvertenty disabled a driver via the device manager.

 

Not really. Not on notebooks. Remember, the primary purpose for the class of computers known as notebooks is to be "portable computers" for business travelers. People who throughout the day, day in and day out, connect and disconnect their "portable computers" to projection devices, docking stations, external keyboards, monitors and mice.

And so for them, having a simple hot-key combo to enable and disable various features is the way to go, and is exactly why ONLY notebook keyboards have a Fn key.

You didn't disable the driver. You simply disabled the device. The driver was still enabled - otherwise, the Fn + F9 would not have worked at all.

 

I plug stuff into my laptop all the time, and I don't have a problem going into the control panel to allow my computer to connect to a display.... to each their own, I suppose, but I'm going to see if I can disable this.

 

Which is exactly why notebook makers include the hot-key options - so folks can disable it when they want to.

Since this appears to be the first time you accidentally disabled it, is it really such a pain to have the option there?

I note if you disable the driver, you will ALWAYS need to have your mouse connected. And if you are in a document and suddenly decide you need the touch pad (like your mouse stops working for some reason), going into Device Manager to enable it again requires not only many more steps, but you likely will need to reboot too. Another pain when working on docs.

I think you are asking for more trouble if you disable it in Device Manager. Especially now that you know how easy it is to simply hit Fn + F9.

 

I think you misunderstood my intention. My goal (which I now have, after you brought up the flash cards) was simply to use the mouse, but when that wasn't plugged in, use the touchpad. I'm not intrested in disabling the touchpad driver.

I did use the phrase "disable the driver," but that was just an example of something that should be a deliberate choice, not something that you can do inadvertently (and yes I realize the driver wasn't disabled by the Fn+F9 combo--again, this was just an example).

Disabling the flash cards was as easy as going into msconfig and unchecking that box in teh startup tab. I didn't uninstall anything, and if I decide to enable that feature, it will be easy enough to enable.

 

Okay. As you noted, to each his own. As long as your method works for you, that's good enough for me.