Touchpad stopped working

The touchpad, that does mouse-type things, that is built into my Acer
Netbook has stopped working. I can't move the cursor with it and the
clickers don't do anything.

I think that may have happened when my simple Dell mouse stopped
working right and I bought a MS Comfort Mouse 4500 (which isn't giving
me much comfort now). It has two extra buttons and software to go
with it, which I installed. Is it likely that this messed up my
touchpad.

I was in the car a couple days ago and the mouse was in the trunk so I
wanted to use the touchpad, and that's when I noticed it didn't work.

Is there a way to make the touchpad work and the fancy software for
the new mouse to work at the same time?

Micky wrote:
The touchpad, that does mouse-type things, that is built into my Acer
Netbook has stopped working. I can't move the cursor with it and the
clickers don't do anything.

I think that may have happened when my simple Dell mouse stopped
working right and I bought a MS Comfort Mouse 4500 (which isn't giving
me much comfort now). It has two extra buttons and software to go
with it, which I installed. Is it likely that this messed up my
touchpad.

I was in the car a couple days ago and the mouse was in the trunk so I
wanted to use the touchpad, and that's when I noticed it didn't work.

Is there a way to make the touchpad work and the fancy software for
the new mouse to work at the same time?

I would say "you can go forward or you can go backward",
with no guarantee anything will change.

Device Manager has one level of roll-back on drivers.

Just as easily, you could go to Programs and Features and remove
Intellipoint for the Comfort Mouse there.

Trackpads use filter drivers. Without a driver, a trackpad
functions as a mouse. The filter driver, when installed,
keeps track of the coordinates and implements virtual functions.

The Comfort Mouse 4500, would likely work as a defacto HID device
with three buttons working. Installing Intellipoint, it may be a filter
driver, but I have nothing here to test with (i.e. to see a trackpad
malfunction and a Comfort Mouse work). I think you can use devcon
to list the presence of filter drivers.

I've heard of Trackpad drivers, wiping out HID functionality
entirely. Some of these things, the subsystem has no proper PNP
and that's where the trouble starts.

I don't honestly think I can deliver advice with a "guaranteed positive"
result. I can see the three button functions of the Comfort Mouse
working, and the Trackpad at the same time. If button 4 and 5 didn't
work, I personally would not consider that the end of the world.

If you want to "go forward", you can reinstall the Trackpad driver.
I expect filter drivers can "stack", but like so much software,
I don't think the order of installation, guarantees a damn thing.
And the end result could be just as bad as before.

Paul

Micky wrote:

The touchpad, that does mouse-type things, that is built into my Acer
Netbook has stopped working. I can't move the cursor with it and the
clickers don't do anything.

I think that may have happened when my simple Dell mouse stopped
working right and I bought a MS Comfort Mouse 4500 (which isn't giving
me much comfort now). It has two extra buttons and software to go
with it, which I installed. Is it likely that this messed up my
touchpad.

I was in the car a couple days ago and the mouse was in the trunk so I
wanted to use the touchpad, and that's when I noticed it didn't work.

Is there a way to make the touchpad work and the fancy software for
the new mouse to work at the same time?

Look around the edges of the touchpad. Is there a button that
enables/disables the touchpad.

No mention of model (typical) so no one can do your lookup to find the
manual or reply about the same model if they use it as to what are the
hotkeys, like Fn+Fkey, that toggles the touchpad.

On Sat, 29 Apr 2017 01:49:15 -0500, VanguardLH wrote:

Micky wrote:

The touchpad, that does mouse-type things, that is built into my Acer
Netbook has stopped working. I can't move the cursor with it and the
clickers don't do anything.

I think that may have happened when my simple Dell mouse stopped
working right and I bought a MS Comfort Mouse 4500 (which isn't giving
me much comfort now). It has two extra buttons and software to go
with it, which I installed. Is it likely that this messed up my
touchpad.

I was in the car a couple days ago and the mouse was in the trunk so I
wanted to use the touchpad, and that's when I noticed it didn't work.

Is there a way to make the touchpad work and the fancy software for
the new mouse to work at the same time?

Look around the edges of the touchpad. Is there a button that
enables/disables the touchpad.

No, I don't think so.

No mention of model (typical) so no one can do your lookup to find the
manual

I don't give the model, in large part, for exactly that reason.
Because it's my job to find the manual, and so that others won't go to
the trouble to find the manual and read it. That's my responsibility.
And indeed, back home, I did dl the manual and I read parts of it.
IIRC, it wasn't that easy to find, which just makes it even mroe my
responsibility.

or reply about the same model if they use it as to what are the
hotkeys, like Fn+Fkey, that toggles the touchpad.

Merely suggesting a Fn key, as you have done slighly indirectly here,
would be plenty. I know I read what all the Fn keys did, but that was
a couple years ago and if one disabled the touchpad, I'm sure when I
read about it I thought, Why would I want to do that? So I forgot
about it.

So I know I have the manual back home, but I might have put it on this
netbook too. I used Search Everything and searched on
acer pdf
and for some reason it didn't find it that way --Oh, because Acer is
part of the fully qualified file name, but not part of the actual file
name. I got confused and thought Everything was more powerful than it
is. It is true that one needn't spell out the whole file name and you
can just enter parts of it. But "acer" is not part of the actual
file name.

But it did remind me that there is an acer directory on the computer,
and I looked in there and t here it was, UserGuide.pdf, In the acer
directory, so I don't know why Everything didnt' find it. It usually
would. (no, my mistake. It wouldn't.)

And searching on "touchpad" brought me to Fn-F7, which did indeed
work. I may have hit it by accident** some time in the last 3 years.
Or maybe the Comfort Mouse softtware chose to turn it off. There is
a graphic on the F7 button, that shows a finger on the touchpad, and
maybe if there were more light here, I could have understood it when I
looked at it.

**It's only 2 keys from Fn-F5, which switches from the built-in
monitor to the external one. My landlady lent me an external one
which is much bigger, but it stops working every time I reboot the
computer and I still don't know exactly what i've done to connect it
again. So I've used Fn-F5 many times and could have hit F7 by
accident.

Plus Fn-F8 turns the sound off and on, though now I have KeyRemapper
to do that. BTW, Key Remapper seems to no longer have a trial
period that expires. I couldn't rewrite the script for that other
program, AutoHotKey, so i thought I'd get 30 free days from KR, but it
doesn't mention expiring anymore. It's much easier to use than
AutoHotKey.

Thanks for the suggestions.

I was even without the touchpad able the other day to do what I needed
to do, look up a phone number in my email, without a mouse. I think
the only thing I coudln't do is click in the middle of a webpage and
something the tab key won't take one to, but I didn't need that to
look up the phone number. But I might need it tomorrow so I'm glad
it's working again.

On Sat, 29 Apr 2017 02:40:31 -0400, Paul
wrote:

Micky wrote:
The touchpad, that does mouse-type things, that is built into my Acer
Netbook has stopped working. I can't move the cursor with it and the
clickers don't do anything.

I think that may have happened when my simple Dell mouse stopped
working right and I bought a MS Comfort Mouse 4500 (which isn't giving
me much comfort now). It has two extra buttons and software to go
with it, which I installed. Is it likely that this messed up my
touchpad.

I was in the car a couple days ago and the mouse was in the trunk so I
wanted to use the touchpad, and that's when I noticed it didn't work.

Is there a way to make the touchpad work and the fancy software for
the new mouse to work at the same time?

I would say "you can go forward or you can go backward",

That's better than my 9th grade teacher said. He told me I can go
backwards but I'll never go forward.

with no guarantee anything will change.

Device Manager has one level of roll-back on drivers.

Just as easily, you could go to Programs and Features and remove
Intellipoint for the Comfort Mouse there.

Trackpads use filter drivers. Without a driver, a trackpad
functions as a mouse. The filter driver, when installed,
keeps track of the coordinates and implements virtual functions.

The Comfort Mouse 4500, would likely work as a defacto HID device
with three buttons working. Installing Intellipoint, it may be a filter
driver, but I have nothing here to test with (i.e. to see a trackpad
malfunction and a Comfort Mouse work). I think you can use devcon
to list the presence of filter drivers.

I've heard of Trackpad drivers, wiping out HID functionality
entirely. Some of these things, the subsystem has no proper PNP
and that's where the trouble starts.

I don't honestly think I can deliver advice with a "guaranteed positive"
result. I can see the three button functions of the Comfort Mouse
working, and the Trackpad at the same time. If button 4 and 5 didn't
work, I personally would not consider that the end of the world.

If you want to "go forward", you can reinstall the Trackpad driver.
I expect filter drivers can "stack", but like so much software,

I was going to try this, but, see answer to Vang, I found the manual.

I don't think the order of installation, guarantees a damn thing.
And the end result could be just as bad as before.

Paul

Thanks

Micky wrote:

snipped to the skinny

And searching on "touchpad" brought me to Fn-F7, which did indeed
work.

I've cleaned up laptops before, like Dells, where I had to research on
each piece of software they loaded on startup. A lot of the bundleware
was crap, especially the trialware, but some of it was essential, like
the keyboard scanner which monitors for keyboard scan codes (on down
press and up release). I could eliminate that, too, except all the
Fn+fkey combos would be lost.

On laptops, I've often seen a small button in the frame or bezel around
the touchpad or a separate button. On netbooks, they're so tight on
space that, yeah, I can see why they don't include it. I'd rather have
a physical button dedicated to touchpad enable/disable than rely on a
software-based keyboard monitor. Guess it would cost too much for them
to add a five-cent switch.