The touchpad in laptops is the “mouse” built into them and usually consists of a touchpad and two buttons that act as a left and right click. The fact that it is a touchscreen can cause a lot of annoyance, because by typing on the keyboard we can lean on it and drive it crazy, and precisely for these two reasons it is also part of laptops with a considerable tendency to break down.
What to do if the touchpad is not working
If your laptop’s touchpad is not working at all, and neither is the touchpad or buttons, it is most likely that it has been disabled or has been completely damaged.
In the first case, the first thing to do is to test the key combination on your laptop that turns this feature on and off. As a rule, it is with the keys Fn + F9, but it depends on the make and model of your laptop, it could be another key combination or even a dedicated button. Look for the icon we show you in the following image and try toggle it on and off to see if it comes back to life, as you may have accidentally turned it off.
It is also possible that you have disabled the touchpad in the Windows options, or that in your laptop software (or the mouse options) you have selected that if an external USB mouse is detected, the touchpad of the computer is detected. laptop is disabled. To check the latter, simply disconnect any mouse that you have connected to the computer, and to check the former, you can see it in Windows mouse options.
There are two other additional checks you can run if the touchpad is not working. The first is to verify that you don’t have the device disabled in Windows (or that it has its drivers correctly, although in the vast majority of cases they come standard with the operating system), and for this To do this, click the Start button and select Device Admin. Under the “User Interface (HID) devices” category, verify that it is not disabled (and if it is, right-click and click Enable) or that it does not appear with a red cross indicating that it does not have any drivers (in which case right click and select Update driver).
Finally, if the touchpad is not working, it may be disabled in the laptop BIOS. To check this, as soon as you turn on the computer, repeatedly press the DEL, F2 or F10 key depending on your laptop to access the BIOS, and in the Advanced menu you will find the option “Internal pointing device”. Make sure it is not disabled.
If none of this made the touchpad work again, it’s likely physically damaged and you’ll need to get it fixed.
What to do if the touchpad “goes crazy”
A fairly common problem with laptop touchpads is that they don’t behave as expected, or in a familiar way, they go crazy. For example, when you place your finger on the touchpad, the cursor on the screen will start moving erratically from side to side, or even without even touching the touchpad, the cursor will move on its own. .
There are two potential reasons why the touchpad might fail this way, and both are physical. The first reason is that there is something “loose” internally or not properly connected, and the way to see it is unfortunately to open the laptop to access the component and be able to do so. review, so our advice is to present it to a repair service or that, if you do, you know that you are voiding the warranty (if any) and that you might break something. Do this at your own risk.
The second potential reason is simple dirt. Although we have clean hands, human skin still has some sort of “fat” that adheres to the surfaces we touch, and ultimately there is a good buildup of it on the touchpad, which in turn. , remains the dust and dirt in general stuck, which can produce this undesirable behavior in the device.
The best thing you can do is use a dry microfiber cloth and isopropyl alcohol (do not use sanitary alcohol for this as you may damage the device) and, wetting the cloth a bit but Without leaking liquid, insistently clean the entire surface of the touchpad. , with particular emphasis on the corners and edges, where dirt collects the most.
Again, if with that you cannot fix it, it is better to take it to a technical service, although it is true that if your touchpad does not work, you can still do without it by using a mouse. USB.
