touchpad on laptop won't work...suggestions?
 

I carry my laptop to and from work. At work I have a wireless keyboard and mouse i hook up, but I leave them at work. Every once in a while, I come home and startup my laptop and it still thinks the wireless keyboard and mouse are plugged in and my mouse pointer is parked right in the center of the screen and I can't move it, or click, etc. (On a weird note, I didn't use my wireless keyboard at all today, and I came home and it still happened). I can get around a little using the arrows and cursor, but it sure is annoying.
I've fixed it before, but I can't remember how -- Anyone know how to fix it, and how to prevent it from happening again?

Typically the use of an external mouse won't deactivate the touchpad, but your setup may be different. There may also be a button, often a horizontal bar, near the touchpad that will turn it on and off.

Worse comes to worse, you could always uninstall and reinstall the driver for your touchpad from the device manager (system control panel, hardware tab). Just remove it and then reinstall it.

If none of this helps, let me know what type of laptop you have and I'll see what I can find.

Thanks! The only way I can tell that it's looking for the wireless is the program icon in the bottom right hand corner shows up. I have a Sony Vaio laptop, it has the dual processor, 100gb hard drive, xp media center -- I can't find a button, thanks for the tip though -- I'll re-install the driver at work tomorrow.

One other question - what type of wireless keyboard/mouse do you use?

logitech

This is pretty hit or miss, but I found this on another forum. See if it applies to you.

"Start>Programs>Sony Notebook Setup>Sony Notebook Setup Device Tab. You will see a tick box beside the pointing device. This will disable the touchpad."