The touchpad may cease to work if the drivers are damaged, if they are disabled within Windows, by the physical switch, or when you have the wrong touchpad settings. In this guide, will provide various ways you can get your touchpad working again. Before you continue, we recommend you connect an external mouse or use the laptop’s TrackPoint if available.
Method 1: Checking the Mouse Settings
On some devices, the touchpad may cease to work if an external mouse is attached. You can disable this setting on this same tab.
Method 2: Using the Windows Hardware and Devices Troubleshooter
The Windows Troubleshooter tool can assist you in finding unknown issues facing your touchpad and provide solutions to them.
Method 3: Reinstall the Touchpad Drivers
A faulty or absent mouse driver may cause your touchpad not to work. Reinstalling the original touchpad drivers can make it work again. Drivers fail to work either after a faulty update or when the newer version of the OS doesn’t match the outdated version of the Drivers.
Method 4: Updating the Touchpad Drivers
The device manager can give you information about hardware issues and help you update existing drivers. For example, if a device has an exclamation sign or an X icon next to it, it means the device has software or hardware issues. Follow the steps below to locate and update the touchpad drivers.
Method 5: Checking the Physical Touchpad Switch
It is a common occurrence for computer users to unknowingly disable the touchpad using the physical switch, especially on touchpads with the switch located at the corners. Keyboards with multimedia mode enabled do not require you to press the Function Key while activating the touchpad. You just need to press the touchpad key to reactivate it. Some other laptops like HP have the touchpad switch on the touchpad hence require another method to turn it on.
Method 6: Checking the BIOS Settings
As our last resort, we will check whether the touchpad option is disabled from the BIOS itself. Every laptop has settings regarding touchpad in its BIOS where the user can either or disable it according to his will. If the touchpad settings are disabled by default in BIOS, changing other settings won’t work. Note: Make sure that you don’t change other BIOS options which you don’t know about.
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