Stupid mousey thing no work!

October 31, 2009 3:02 PM

Trackpad suddenly stopped working - any solutions?

Details:
Dual-boot: WinXP, v5.1, SP3. Ubuntu 8.10.
Acer Aspire 4730Z, out of warranty.
Trackpad stopped working in both operating systems. When this happened before, I plugged in a USB mouse, and when I removed it, the trackpad worked again. Now it's dead, as are the two left-/right-click buttons.

The curious part is that all of the trackpad - buttons and pad itself - stopped working. That doesn't grok. Can't be a driver issue, since it's across two OS's. Yeah, I'm probably screwed, but if anyone has a clue...

posted by IAmBroom to computers & internet (6 comments total)

I'm pretty sure you don't have the same issue , but earlier this week, the trackpad on a friend's Macbook Pro stopped working. Then the battery started bulging, which I hear is Not Good. :)
posted by runningwithscissors at 3:14 PM on October 31 [1 favorite]

Have you rebooted? (I know it's a stupid suggestion, but it often works in this kind of situation.)
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 4:29 PM on October 31 [1 favorite]

Could it be that the laptop has a special key combination (Fn+F7) that turns off the trackpad? Do you still get click and motion events when you use xev in an x terminal and move the pointer over to the event-capturing window?
posted by PontifexPrimus at 4:58 PM on October 31 [1 favorite]

The ribbon that plugs the trackpad into the motherboard could be unseated. Look under the keyboard.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 5:04 PM on October 31 [1 favorite]

BLESS YOU, PontifexPrimus !!!

I'm an atheist, so I don't really know if my blessing will count for anything with the deity of your choice, but JIC - bless you!

Fn+F7! It's a fucking hardware/firmware switch, not a Windows(tm) thing.
posted by IAmBroom at 6:53 PM on October 31

Everyone else had pretty reasonable suggestions, so a general Thank You all around!
posted by IAmBroom at 6:55 PM on October 31