How to Fix Your Laptop’s Touchpad When It’s Not Working 2022

Touchpads are standard features on most laptops. They can be troublesome when they malfunction. If you have an extra mouse lying around, it gives you something else to carry around (and something else to forget when you’re on the go). Fortunately, fixing your laptop’s touchpad isn’t difficult.

To troubleshoot the touchpad on your laptop, you can try a few different things. Here are some of the easiest and most common fixes.

1) Check for Fn Key Combinations

There are some laptops that have a Fn key function that disables the touchpad. If this is the case for your computer, you may have accidentally disabled your touchpad by pressing this combination. This varies from computer to computer, so we can’t tell you exactly which buttons to push. A lot of laptops use the F9 key, however.

Try the F9 key, or look for the Fn key with a square next to a square with a line through it. You can try each Fn key and see if one of them turns your touchpad back on if you cannot find them.

2) Touchpad Disable Button

There are some touchpads with a built-in disable button. This is usually indicated by a logo or icon on the top corner of the touchpad. Tapping this icon turns the touchpad off. If your touchpad has a small logo/icon in the top corner, double-tap it to see if your touchpad turns back on. These are not on all laptops, but they are becoming more common.

3) Check Your BIOS Settings

A virus can disable your touchpad if your motherboard BIOS disables it during firmware updates. Your motherboard may have disabled your touchpad if it isn’t working. To turn it back on, you’ll need to access your motherboard’s settings.

Restart your laptop.
Press “Delete” or “F2” while it’s rebooting. This will bring up your BIOS. Other laptops may use another key to enter BIOS. You can usually find the key to press on the reboot screen or by checking the manual that came with your laptop. Of course, you can always Google it.)
Locate the “Internal Pointing Device” setting. This setting can be found in different places. If you have advanced settings, you can find it there. Also, the name might be different, such as “Pointing Device Internal.”
Make sure this setting is set to “enabled.” If it is disabled, your touchpad has been turned off.
After saving the changes, click “exit.”

4) Uninstall Mouse Drivers

When plugged in, some external mice automatically disable your touchpad. If you’ve recently connected a new external mouse, it may be disabling your touchpad. There are several ways you can fix this.

You can try turning off your computer first:

Remove the USB cable from your external mouse.
Shut down your computer.
Start it up again.

The mouse likely downloaded a driver that disables your touchpad if that doesn’t work. Uninstall your external mouse driver to fix this problem:

Look for “Device Manager” in the lower left corner of your screen.
Click on the device manager app. A number of drop-down menus will appear.
Choose “Mice and other pointing devices” from the drop-down menu. A list of all your current mice drivers should appear.
Uninstall them one by one. This will fix your touchpad if one of them was causing the problem.

Note: If your mouse driver is causing the problem, you will need to purchase a new mouse unless you want to keep uninstalling it.

5) Update Your Touchpad Driver

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

Enter “Device Manager” into the search bar on the lower-left corner of your screen. Select the app that appears.
Find your touchpad in the “mice and other pointing devices” drop-down menu. It is also known as Lenovo Touchpad, Synaptics, or something of the sort. If you use an external mouse as well and see two “HID-compliant mouse” entries, the touchpad will be the one without the USB port in the location property.
Click “Update driver”.
The driver will be updated.
Restart the computer.

6) Check Your Touchpad Settings

It’s possible that your touchpad settings are incorrect if your touchpad still doesn’t work.

Enter “touchpad” into your search bar at the bottom of your screen.
Then click “touchpad settings.”
Make sure your touchpad is turned on.

You should check your mouse settings as well.

Search for “control panel” in your bottom search bar.
Select the Hardware and Sound option.
Under devices and printers, select the mouse option.
Locate your touchpad settings. You will find them under one of the tabs.
Check the box next to “Enable Touchpad”. If it isn’t checked, do so now.
Click Apply, and then click OK.

What if It Still Isn’t Working?

I hope one of these fixes helped. If it didn’t, you probably have a hardware problem or a virus. Also, your system files could be corrupt, but you’d probably also be experiencing other issues.