Answered Touchpad problems linked to FM?

[Shippers77]

Wasn’t sure where to post this so I have just plumped for here.

I have recently picked up the fourth laptop I have ever owned and earlier tonight the mousepad has stopped working entirely, and this isn’t the first time this has happened to me. Years ago on an old machine the same thing happened - again when the laptop was very new, at the time I had a small computer repairs shop literally at the end of my road, after a few questions the rather grumpy bloke in the store blamed FM citing that laptops “weren’t made for games“ and told me it couldn’t be fixed, from that point I started using a USB mouse.

The next laptop I had after this the same thing happened, I didn’t really think anything of it and as I still had the USB mouse to hand I just started using that again, the interesting thing with that was I broke the screen of that laptop and had to get it replaced ( again an independent repairs shop- not the one previously mentioned) and once the laptop was returned to me with new screen the mousepad was working?? And it continued to work until I stopped using it, which was Christmas time

so here we are again - new laptop I’ve had since Christmas and the mousepad has stopped working , and the only constant through the years and the different laptops is FM - anyone of you fine folk have any ideas here??

 

[Danwolf]

I can safely say FM isn't going to be the cause of a touchpad not working from a hardware point of view, nor software really.

Have you checked to see if touchpad has been disabled accidently, can happen using a keyboard shortcut. Can also see if it's still being picked up in device manager.

If I had to guess without looking and it's not been disabled accidently, it might be wear and tear / overuse of the touchpad. For example do you tap the mousepad to click, or does it have physical buttons to left/right click?

Also since it's quite a new laptop, it'll be covered by warranty so they'll be able to fix it.

Oh, I moved the thread to technical discussion since it seemed more fitting there.

 

[Shippers77]

Firstly thank you for moving this to a more appropriate section of the forum!

Yeah as I said in the OP the main reason I bought this up is cause it isn’t the first time this has happened or even the second so the wear and tear thing seems to be off the mark, maybe on one new laptop as a case of bad luck but on three ?? I do use the touchpad to click a lot but it’s also the buttons that had stopped working

I’ve had a look online at various bits about touchpads and keyboard shortcuts that didn’t seem to help then I came across an article specific to HP (my current make of laptop is HP) that said If a certain point of the top left of the touchpad is double tapped it can disable/ enable touchpad so after tapping that a few times (didn’t work at first) it seems to be working now!

ill have a look at the device manager section as you mentioned just to familiarise myself with it if nothing else

 

[Danwolf]

Firstly thank you for moving this to a more appropriate section of the forum!

Yeah as I said in the OP the main reason I bought this up is cause it isn’t the first time this has happened or even the second so the wear and tear thing seems to be off the mark, maybe on one new laptop as a case of bad luck but on three ?? I do use the touchpad to click a lot but it’s also the buttons that had stopped working

I’ve had a look online at various bits about touchpads and keyboard shortcuts that didn’t seem to help then I came across an article specific to HP (my current make of laptop is HP) that said If a certain point of the top left of the touchpad is double tapped it can disable/ enable touchpad so after tapping that a few times (didn’t work at first) it seems to be working now!

ill have a look at the device manager section as you mentioned just to familiarise myself with it if nothing else

I'm glad! Makes me wonder if your previous laptop also just had the touchpad disabled. Happy to help to. If you're wondering why the touchpad can be disabled so easily to, it's just to prevent misclicking if you're typing an essay or using an external mouse.

 

[Shippers77]

I'm glad! Makes me wonder if your previous laptop also just had the touchpad disabled. Happy to help to. If you're wondering why the touchpad can be disabled so easily to, it's just to prevent misclicking if you're typing an essay or using an external mouse.

yeah could have been a case of me double tapping that particular spot before which disabled the touchpad. Thanks for the help ?