How to Fix Your Laptop’s Touchpad When It’s Not Working

Is your laptop’s touchpad not working? In this post, we cover the common reasons why your touchpad may not be working and how to fix them.

The touchpad is a standard feature on most laptops. If your touchpad malfunctions, it can be a huge pain. Even if you have a spare mouse laying around, that gives you something else to carry around (and something else to forget when you’re on the go). Luckily, fixing your laptop’s touchpad doesn’t have to be complicated.

There are a couple of different things you can do to troubleshoot the touchpad on your laptop. We’ve outlined some of the easiest and most common fixes below.

1. Check for Fn Key Combinations

Some laptops have an Fn key function that disables the touchpad. If this is the case for your computer, it is possible you accidentally disabled your touchpad by pressing this combination on your computer. Of course, this variation varies from computer to computer, so we can’t tell you precisely what buttons to push. (A lot of laptops use the F9 key, though.)

You can try the F9 key, or look for the Fn key that has a square next to a square with a line through it. If you can’t find those, try going through each Fn key and see if one of them turns your touchpad back on.

2. Touchpad Disable Button

Some touchpads come with a built-in disable button. This can often be found on the top corner of the touchpad—and it’s usually indiciated by a logo/icon. If you tap this icon, you’ll turn off your touchpad. If your touchpad has a small logo/icon in the top corner, try double-tapping it to see if your touchpad kicks back on. Not all laptops have these, but they are becoming more common.

3. Check Your BIOS Settings

Your touchpad can become disabled through your motherboard BIOS during firmware updates or even because of a virus. If your touchpad isn’t working, there is a chance it was disabled through your motherboard. To turn it back on, you’ll need to get into your motherboard settings.

1. Reboot your laptop.
2. While it’s rebooting, press either “Delete” or “F2”. This will bring up your BIOS. (Other laptops may use a different key to get into BIOS. You can usually find out what button you need to press on the reboot screen or by checking the manual that came with your laptop. Of course, you could always Google it as well.)
3. Find the “Internal Pointing Device” setting. The location of this setting varies. It can be under your advanced settings options if you have those. The name might also be a little different, such as “Pointing Device Internal.”
4. Make sure this setting is set to “enabled.” If it is disabled, it means your touchpad has been turned off.
5. Click “save changes and exit.”

4. Uninstall Mouse Drivers

Some external mice automatically disable your touchpad when plugged in. If you’ve recently plugged in a new external mouse, it could very well be that that mouse is disabling your touchpad. There are a couple of different ways you can fix this problem.

Firstly, you can try turning off your computer:

1. Unplug your external mouse USB.
2. Turn off your computer.
3. Turn it back on.

If that doesn’t work, the mouse likely downloaded a driver that is disabling your touchpad. You will need to uninstall your external mouse driver to fix this problem:

1. Search for “Device Manager” on the lower left side of your screen.
2. Click on the device manager app. This will bring up a massive list of drop-down menus.
3. Find the drop-down menu that says “mice and other pointing devices.” Click on this. It should bring down a list of all your current mice drivers.
4. Next, begin uninstalling your mouse drivers one by one. If one of them was causing the malfunction with your touchpad, this will fix it.

Note: If it turns out to be your mouse driver causing the issue, you will need to purchase a different mouse unless you want to uninstall the driver every time.

5. Update Your Touchpad Driver

Since you’re already in the device manager, let’s update your touchpad driver just in case.

1. Type “Device Manager” into the search bar at the lower-left corner of your screen. Click the app that appears.
2. Click the “mice and other pointing devices” drop-down menu and find your touchpad in the list of mice. It can be called any number of things, such as Lenovo Touchpad, Synaptics, or something of that sort. It can also be labeled “HID-compliant mouse.” If you use an external mouse as well and see two “HID-compliant mouse” entries, the touchpad will be the one without the USB in the location property.
3. Click the “update driver” option.
4. Wait for your driver to update.
5. Restart your computer.

6. Check Your Touchpad Settings

If your touchpad still isn’t working, there might be something wrong in your touchpad settings.

1. Type in “touchpad” into your search bar at the bottom of your screen.
2. Click “touchpad settings.”
3. Make sure your touchpad is toggled ON.

You should check your mouse settings as well.

1. Type “control panel” into your search bar at the bottom of the screen.
2. Click on the Hardware and Sound option.
3. Click on the mouse option under devices and printers.
4. Find your touchpad settings. You should be able to find them underneath one of the tabs.
5. Ensure that the box by “Enable Touchpad” is checked. If it isn’t, check it now.
6. Click Apply and then OK.

What if It Still Isn’t Working?

Hopefully, one of these fixes helped. If it didn’t, you either have a hardware problem or a virus. Your system files could also be corrupted, but you’d probably be experiencing other issues, as well.