Member Avatar for jeffrandall1

Hi,

For some reason my touchpad and buttons have been switched off/disabled by the O/S. In the system tray I can see that there is an icon displaying 'Touchpad Off' but I want it to be on.

I'm not sure how it's been disabled but I would like to activate it again. Have tried right clicking on the system tray for a context menu but none appears, have launched device manager also but it doesn't appear in this list.

So it may be disabled because it's become damaged or something, but any advice on how to reactivate it would be appreciated.

Thanks
James

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Useful follow-up notes and a compact troubleshooting checklist based on 's symptoms and 's direction. The behaviour described — touchpad usable at the logon/guest stage but disabled once the desktop finishes loading, plus the appearance/disappearance of a “Touchpad Off”/Synaptics icon — strongly points to a driver or per‑user utility conflict rather than an immediately obvious hardware fault.

Steps to try (in order):

  • Check for a hardware or Fn key toggle: look for a touchpad icon on the function keys or a dedicated on/off switch and try toggling it.
  • Verify firmware/BIOS: confirm the internal pointing device is enabled in the BIOS/UEFI settings.
  • Inspect Device Manager with hidden devices shown; look under “Mice and other pointing devices” and “Human Interface Devices.” If a touchpad entry is missing or flagged, uninstall the entry (optionally remove driver software), then reboot and let Windows re-detect the device.
  • Install the model‑specific driver from the laptop maker (or the correct Synaptics/Elantech package if the hardware matches). If a third‑party driver is already present, try uninstalling it and testing the built‑in driver as discovered the act of installing/uninstalling fixed the state.
  • If the touchpad works at login but not after desktop load for one account, investigate per‑user startup utilities and accessibility settings — disable third‑party mouse/touchpad utilities from the account’s startup items and test a clean boot or a fresh user profile.

Practical notes and cautions: reinstalling or removing a driver often forces Windows to reinitialize the device stack and can clear a corrupted driver or conflicting utility; keep a System Restore point before driver changes and save the working driver package. If none of the above restores reliable operation, a hardware failure is still possible — try an external USB mouse to separate hardware from software issues and consider vendor support or a service check.

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Member Avatar for caperjack

hello ,try this ,start/control panel /mouse /device settings/ and there you should see disable /enable ,hope this helps .

Member Avatar for jeffrandall1

thanks but no luck (unless i'm missing something somewhere.) had a look in control panel -> hardware and sound -> devices and printers -> mouse -> mouse properties -> hardware tab. i can only see 2 devices; HID-compliant mouse and PS/2 compliant mouse. both devices status are 'working properly'. can't see anything relating to touchpad in any of the other tabs in mouse properties?

Member Avatar for caperjack

ok check device manager and mouse and other pointing devices ,if its not in there then you need to reinstall its drivers . .i checked Fujitsu site and don't list driver for it .if it happens to be in the device manager with a red x or yellow !,then double click on it and choose update driver ,and let it search for driver
the mouse setting in control panel should look like this [mine shown ]

touch_pad.PNG 185.46 KB
Edited by caperjack because: n/a
Member Avatar for jeffrandall1

hi caperjack, thanks for your advice again.

well, checked device manager but found no touchpad driver so installed synaptics touchpad drivers v6.5. once the drivers had been installed and the machine rebooted i noticed that the touchpad would work on the windows user account selection phase and also for the guest account while the desktop loaded (however the touchpad wouldn't work once the desktop had finished loading.)

it also still wouldn't work when logged in for my user account but the 'touchpad off' icon had disappeared from the system tray to be replaced by the synaptics touchpad icon (whatever settings i tried i still couldn't get the touchpad to work.) so i uninstalled the synaptics drivers to see if the touchpad would still work during the windows user account selection phase (which it did) and then while logged into the guest account it continued to work. then switched to my user account and the touchpad is now working!

so by installing and then uninstalling the synaptics driver the touchpad is now working again though not sure why (sto;; not sure again why it suddenly stopped working in the first place!) anyway, thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

Member Avatar for caperjack

your welcome

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