Out of ideas: touchpad not working

Joseph

Hi all

I have a friends Advent 7211 here. They gave it to me saying the touchpad wasn't working at all. USB mice etc work fine. Went into synaptics in mouse settings and no devices were showing up there. No unknown devices in device manager. Uninstalled driver and installed latest drivers - same issue

Took laptop apart, cleaned connections of touchpad and reconnected - same problem. It is as if the touchpad is not there, any suggestions? The obvious which springs to mind is the touchpad is dead but I've never come accross a compeletely DEAD touchpad before that had to be replaced?

Kinetic^

Is there a software or hardware switch that turns off the trackpad?

Joseph

No software switch, I have searched and cannot find a hardware switch.

I booted into a linux live CD and it still didn't work, which leads me to believe that it is a hardware issue

Kinetic^

Any blown chips/capacitors on the board?

Joseph

Nothing obviously visible

Elite_Etnisa

Remove the plastic part on the laptop with touch pad there are usually "clips" on the sides lift it up and you will see the touchpad

Joseph

You mean to see the cables connecting it to MB? checked those

hearny

I know its unlikely but I said I would post it anyway.

There might be a key combination to disable it fn+F(1-12)

Some laptops have them for touchpads.

Look at the blue icons above the F keys.

You could go through them to see if any of them turn it back on.

Joseph

hearny wrote: »

I know its unlikely but I said I would post it anyway.

There might be a key combination to disable it fn+F(1-12)

Some laptops have them for touchpads.

Look at the blue icons above the F keys.

You could go through them to see if any of them turn it back on.

Thanks for the suggestion and have tried that along with searching for software and hardware switches

the_syco

I take it that you've looked in BIOS to ensure that it's not disabled there? Have done it in the past myself.

bonzodog2

In the Mouse control panel applet I have 2 Synaptics add-ons (extra tabs on the property sheet), one is Device Settings and allows disable trackpad. (XP on a Dell). Worth a look ?