Possibly hosed laptop

[telecom_goddess]

I'm not sure if this is completely hosed or what...but I have an hp laptop, about 3 years old, running windows xp. The touch pad appears to be dead.....I can run the cursor around on the screen but the buttons don't work at all. When I press the light on it it comes up amber, which according to help files I read means it's disabled. I can't find a way to re enable it through the control panel, the only thing listed is the non existant mouse it says is hooked up.

So ok I figure I will hook up a usb mouse...no that doesn't work AT ALL. Same thing showing up in the control panel..looks normal. I tried all 3 usb ports. Now i know the ports have power to them cause I charge my e cigarette through them all the time .

We ran linux off a cdrom and the mouse worked through that just fine, but the touchpad was still dead.

WTF? I really don't like using it with only the keyboard .

[telecom_goddess]

Sounds like you have a corrupted Alps driver (HP laptops use the Alps brand touchpad). What you will need to do is uninstall the driver through the device manager and restart your laptop. What should happen is that the driver should automatically reinstall itself. Ideally the touchpad should work again after that.

I don't think I saw it in the device manager but I'll look again....I'll let you know how it turns out and thanks.

[lordlundar]

You'll find it under the mouse category if you need a more specific location.

[telecom_goddess]

You'll find it under the mouse category if you need a more specific location.

On that note.....I looked under mouse and it just lists a mouse that isn't actually hooked up, is that the one I want? There wasn't anything specific for the touch pad. And the only other devices listed were Human Interface Devices or HID.

Sorry I'm used to working with a mouse not a touch pad really.....I'm still confused as to why the mouse won't work either.

[Daskinor]

Hmm, this is a rare event but however.

Sometimes the "Disable the touch pad when the mouse is installed" control is actually a bios option. If the CMOS gets corrupted it can cause an issue where neither work. The computer thinks a non existent mouse is installed at boot.

[EvilEmpryss]

I had something similar happen once on a PC laptop I was using at work. A coworker accidentally yanked the mouse off the computer while I was working, and it would neither acknowledge that the mouse was plugged back in nor let me use the touch pad. When I restarted the computer to use just the touch pad it kept looking for the mouse. The only way to get it to "let go" of the mouse and free up the touch pad was to shut the computer down, plug in the mouse, restart the computer, and then, once it was up and running, go through the proper shut-down sequence. Once it was shut down, I unplugged the mouse and restarted the computer. For some reason the computer finally realized that the mouse wasn't coming back and let me use the touch pad again.

I did a full shut down, not just a restart, so I don't know if that made any difference. I know it sounds simplistic, and I have no real technical understanding of why it worked, but maybe it will work for you, too?

[telecom_goddess]

I dunno if that will work but I will try it can't lose either way

[telecom_goddess]

FYI I have now handed this laptop to a co worker to try and deal with...I basically didn't have the time...sigh. I'm waiting to hear word on whether he was able to get it working or not.

If not then meh...I can maybe get a new one at some point in time.