The touchpad on a laptop is an important feature as it helps control the cursor position on the screen and choose and open files and folders. If it malfunctions, the inconvenience can be huge, even if you have another mouse around. Luckily, fixing your computer’s touchpad won’t take long and requires any electronics or software engineering expertise.
The best way to fix your touchpad is by going through the troubleshooting guides we have listed below. Some fixes require you to perform some work yourself, but most of them only take minutes.
9 Ways to Fix Laptop Touchpad when it’s not working
Here are the fixes that you can try to make your laptop touchpad work again. But first make sure if this is not due to laptop overheating, or you may have the best laptop that doesn’t overheat.
1. Check Touchpad Disable Button
Some laptops have a built-in disable button that can be found on the top corner of their touchpad, often indicated by a pattern or logo. If you tap this area, it turns off your pad from use.
Check your laptop and analyze if its touchpad has this function. You may double-tap that area to reactivate the touchpad for normal functioning. Most manufacturers do not provide this disabled button, but I’ve seen them more lately as they become increasingly popular among consumers looking for ways to prevent accidental touch during gaming. Here is a video for Acer models.
Related: 7 Easy Ways to Connect a Laptop to a TV
2. Check for Fn Key Combinations
If your laptop has an Fn Key combination function, it may be the possible reason for disabling the touchpad. You can find the Fn key on the bottom line of your keyboard. However, the key combination varies from laptop to laptop; therefore, you need to read the user manual or laptop help section for the exact key combination.
To start, you may look for the Fn key, which has a square box and a line drawn through it. After finding the right key combination, try using it and check for the touchpad is working. If it doesn’t work, move to the next solution.
3. Evaluate External devices
When you plug in any external USB device, it can disable the touchpad’s functioning. If you have connected several external devices, disconnect them all from the laptop and turn them off. Now turn on the laptop and check if the touchpad works again.
If it works, try connecting the external devices back up again one at a time while checking with each separate operation whether they disable the touchpad or not. If the problem persists, you may check whether the touchpad is disabled in the BIOS setting.
Related: How to Connect a Wireless Mouse?
4. Enabling Touchpad in BIOS Settings
If you notice that your touchpad is not working after updating the firmware on your computer, it’s possible that any update disabled it through the motherboard. To get back up and running again with a functioning input device, restart the laptop.
When your computer reboots, press either the F2 or Delete key to enter the BIOS menu. Depending on the manufacturer, you may need a different key and can usually find out by going through the manual that came with the laptop. Another way to find out the BIOS key is by Googling your laptop model and manufacturer.
Find the “Internal Pointing Device” setting under your advanced settings options. The location of this option varies depending on the manufacturer and model, but it will either have a different name. You may look for a little variation like “Pointing Device Internal.”
If you want to use your touchpad, enable this setting by clicking “enabled” and clicking the save button, and exit to restart the laptop.
5. Update Your Touchpad Driver
- Click the search bar at the bottom left of your screen. Type “Device Manager” into it and click on whatever app appears to open up device manager in Windows 10.
- To find your touchpad click the “mouse and other pointing devices” drop-down menu. For example, it can be called any number of things, such as Lenovo Touchpad or Synaptics Touchpad. You may also see a label saying “HID-compliant mouse.” If you have an external mouse, too, then there will be two entries. You can easily find the touchpad one as it is without the USB.
- Now to update the driver, click on “Update Driver.”
- It will find the update and install it.
- Reboot the laptop to let the changes happen.
Besides, Here is a helpful video to update synaptics touchpad drivers in windows 10.
6. Uninstall Touchpad Drivers
If you’ve noticed your touchpad is not working correctly, it may be due to an out-of-date or wrong touchpad driver. You’ll need to remove any mouse drivers from Windows for these problems to go away. To start with this:
- Open Windows “Device Manager” by searching in the Windows 10 search bar.
- Open the app that appears in the search results, and you will see classic windows with drop-down menus.
- To find your current mouse drivers, click on the drop-down menu that says “mice and other pointing devices.” This should bring down a list of all installed mice within Windows 10 or 8 (depending on if you have one).
- Next, you need to go through and uninstall all mouse drivers one by one. If a certain driver was causing your touchpad issues, this should take care of them.
Drivers can be troublesome, but luckily there is a way around it. If you find out that your mouse driver has caused the issue, then purchase another when necessary.
7. Check Your Touchpad Settings in Windows
Something in your settings may be preventing the touchpad from working properly.
- In the search bar at the bottom left of the screen, type “touchpad.”
- Open “touchpad settings” from the search bar.
- In the main windows, check if the touchpad is toggled ON. If not, turn it ON.
- Restart the laptop to let the changes happen..
Watch this video to enable or disable touchpad in windows 10.
8. Checking for Corrupt operating system files
Corrupt operating system files are a possible cause of touchpad malfunctions. While you might notice other issues due to the corruption, this could result in it not working properly or only partially so that clicking on anything will produce an error instead of doing what we want, like moving forward when our index finger is hovering over its surface.
The answer to this problem requires you to activate a restore point at least the date before your touchpad stops working or perform an operating system repair. The installation will require either accessing the hard drive’s recovery partition or using an install disc for installation.
9. Identify Defective hardware
If you have tried the troubleshooting options and they don’t work, it may be time to get a new touchpad. You may try to contact the laptop manufacturer and claim the warranty or get checked by the nearby hardware lab to understand the issue better. If that’s not an option for whatever reason, try connecting your laptop with an external mouse instead of using its built-in device.
