Touchpad Troubleshooting

A touch pad is a pointing device. It has a specialize surface that translate the motion of the user's finger to the motion of the mouse cursor on screen. It is mainly use with the Notebooks/laptop computers. Different sizes of touch pad present in the market. We find them on many portable devices like PDA. A pointing device is an input interface that allows a user to input data to computer. Different touch pad has different mechanism but all of which entail sensing the capacitance of a finger, or the capacitance between sensors.

Touch Pad Issues And Troubleshooting

Issue 1:- Touchpad is not working at all. It is not sensing your finger

Solution:- Turn on the touchpad button.

Note: If the touchpad light is blue, it works (enabled). If the touchpad light is orange, then it is disabled.

Push the touchpad button to enable or disable the touchpad.


Touchpad Components

Item Component Function

1 Touchpad light Blue: Touchpad is enabled. Amber: Touchpad is disabled.
2 Touchpad Moves the pointer and selects or activates items on the screen.
3 Left and right Touchpad buttons Function like the left and right buttons on an external mouse. 4 Touchpad on/off button Enables/disables the Touchpad.
5 Touchpad vertical scroll zone Allows you to scroll up or down.

Issue 2: Scrolling feature of Touchpad is not working

Cause: This issue may occur if the Virtual scrolling feature is disabled in mouse properties. We can easily fix this issue by enabling Virtual scrolling in Mouse properties.

Here are the steps to enable Virtual scrolling.

1. Click on start and select Control panel. Click on Classic View on the top left side of the control panel.
2. Double click on Mouse in Control panel.



3. Click on Device settings tab in Mouse properties window.

Note: If the Device setting tab is missing on your notebook or if the notebook show any error message as soon as you click on the device settings tab then it should be an issue with Touchpad driver. After installing the touchpad driver, Device settings tab will work properly. Then we can proceed with these steps.

4. Click on Settings in Device settings tab of Mouse properties.



5. Click on Virtual scrolling. Check the check boxes of Enable vertical scrolling and Enable horizontal scrolling. Then Click on Ok and click on Ok on Mouse properties window.

Issue 3: Left click and Right click buttons are not working

Here are the steps to enable Left click and Right click buttons.

1. Click on start and select Control panel. Click on Classic View on the top left side of the control panel.
2. Double click on Mouse in Control panel.
3. Click on Device settings tab in Mouse properties window.

Note: If the Device setting tab is missing on your notebook or if the notebook show any error message as soon as you click on the device settings tab then it should be an issue with Touchpad driver. After installing the touchpad driver, Device settings tab will work properly and there will not be any issue with touchpad.

4. Click on Settings in Device settings tab of Mouse properties.
5. Click on Buttons. Select the check box of Enable buttons. Click on Ok. Click on Ok on Mouse properties window.

Issue 4: Decreasing sensitivity of the touchpad

Touchpad sensitivity must be reduced if curser jumps while you type any documents or if the mouse pointer is so sensitive. Here are the steps to decrease the touchpad sensitivity.

1. Click on start and select Control panel. Click on Classic View on the top left side of the control panel.
2. Double click on Mouse in Control panel.
3. Click on Device settings tab in Mouse properties window.

Note: If the Device setting tab is missing on your notebook or if the notebook show any error message as soon as you click on the device settings tab then it should be an issue with Touchpad driver. After installing the touchpad driver, Device settings tab will work properly and there will not be any issue with touchpad.

4. Click on Settings in Device settings tab of Mouse properties.

5. Click on + next to sensitivity and select Touchpad sensitivity. Slide the sidebar towards Heavy touch and Click on Apply and Ok. Then Click on Ok.



6. If the issue still persists, then it is an issue with the driver, uninstall the touchpad driver from device manager and reinstall the driver.

Issue 5: How to disable the touchpad

Solution 1: You can turn off the touchpad using the touchpad on off button. However, we can disable touchpad in touchpad settings.

Here are the steps to disable the touchpad.

1. Click on start and select Control panel. Click on Classic View on the top left side of the control panel.
2. Double click on Mouse in Control panel.
3. Click on Disable. Then click on Apply and OK. Touchpad will not work any more until you enable the touchpad.

Solution 2: Uninstall the Touch pad driver which will totally disable the Touch pad.
Click on Start and select the control panel.

1. Click on Classic view on the top left side.
2. Double click on device manager.
3. Click on + next to Mice and other pointing devices.
4. Right click on listed device (synaptic/Alps ps/2 port touchpad) and click on uninstall.