laptop touch pad

[The Rookie]

ok i have a dell latitude cpxj. but today the touch pad and the touch stick in the keyboard decide to quit working. I hooked up an external mouse through the ps/2 port and that worked fine. But what could cause the touch pad to quit working?

 

[mojo mofo]

Dried jizz.

 

[The Rookie]

lol, nah i aim better than that.

 

[LosIllini]

Check the settings in the bios-- seems like an old HP laptop I used to have- allowed you to turn off the pointer or pad via bios.

 

[CaptainObvious]

The official Dell response is to flash the BIOS to the latest version and upgrade to the latest synaptics drivers.

It works about 25% of the time, the rest of the time it's hardware which will be a new palmrest and keyboard, then if not fixed a new motherboard. This is expensive if you're not covered under warranty which you're probably not with a CPXJ.

 

[capnamerca]

CP-anythings LOVE to have the touchpads go out. There was a large push to get everyone on the planet upgraded to the latest synaptics drivers and have bad HW replaced. If they just up and stopped working, you've most likely lost the underlying hardware. New touchpad assemblies can be had on ebay, and the install isn't terribly difficult, although it isn't like replacing a floppy disk.

 

[The Rookie]

but wouldnt the touch stick still work, even if the touchpad went out?

 

[capnamerca]

nah, it's all the same connection back to the CPU - touchpad and stick both use the same wires.

 

[The Rookie]

thanks i have a touchpad on the way. 20 bucks shipped on ebay.