Synaptics Touchpad Disables Itself Constantly

[vecral]

All:

I'm having a bit of a conundrum. My Toshiba touchpad has developed a bad habit of disabling itself at random.

The device is listed as a Synaptics Touchpad V7.2.

I'll be typing along, or moving the mouse, or just doing nothing at all (waiting for a download to finish, for instance) and the mouse will become suddenly disabled. The only way to get it back is by pressing FN+F9 or sometimes to press the enable/disable button immediately above the mouse. I know I'm not pressing either of these by accident when the mouse turns off.

When this happened, I took it as a sign that it was time to reformat the hard drive and start fresh. Even during the Windows installation, the mouse continually disabled itself. After installing the Toshiba Value Added Package and the Synaptics driver, the only change is that now I can see a big icon in the center of the screen alert me when the state of the mouse switches from enabled to disabled.

I'm noticing now too that it's not just disabling itself. If I don't re-enable the mouse right away, it will renable itself after a few moments. This can happen as much as once every few seconds and makes getting any real work done impossible.

Any advice?

Thanks very much,

JM

 

[vecral]

Just as a brief update:

Disabling the functionality of the Mouse on/off button and FN+F9 would be an acceptable solution to this problem. I just can't figure out any way to do it.

Thanks again for your help!

JM

 

[mattoro_hallen]

I've had a similar problem and I suspect yours is caused by a part of the touchpad that, when tapped, disables it. Sometimes parts of the pad can become sensitive at all times to the slightest touch and this might be your problem. There's a setting you can try using to disable this feature in the Synaptics driver. If you go to your Windows 7 control panel, then to the mouse settings, there should be a tab in the "Mouse Properties" box there marked with the red Synaptics symbol and the words "Device Settings". Go to this tab, and you should see all your pointing devices (like external mice and the trackpad). Make sure the touchpad is highlighted in the device list, then click "Settings...", and you'll hopefully end up with a new window called something like "Properties for Synaptics Clickpad" or something.

I am using driver v16.2 on a fairly new computer, but I think if you double click the word "Tapping" on the left side of the latter window, another window will appear (or you might just have to click once on an old driver, I don't know). Anyway, if you bring up the Tapping settings, there'll be an option called "TouchPad Disable Zone settings", with a checkbox that allows you to "Double tap to enable or disable touchpad". Uncheck it and see if that solves your problem.

Good luck with both my solution and your laptop, as I'm not sure I have diagnosed you correctly, but no-one else has answered here so maybe it's worth a try. Many people see the disable zone as something helpful, but I had to desensitize mine.

 

[TastyRamen]

i know this is an old thread but i came here looking for a solution only to realise that i was pressing F5 (to refresh web page) and it was actually disabling the mousepad. hope this helps some people

 

[MKEFoodie]

took me forever but it was caused by a double-tap and solved by following the instructions above, going into the "TAPPING" settings to disable "disable by a double tap"
It seems that my touch pad interprets my finger near the touchpad as a double tap.

 

[david67nyc]

i know this is an old thread but i came here looking for a solution only to realise that i was pressing F5 (to refresh web page) and it was actually disabling the mousepad. hope this helps some people

THANK YOU!! Thanks to your post I just noticed that the F5 key on my new cheap Toshiba laptop has an icon representing the trackpad on/off toggle. I was also trying to refresh pages and kept disabling the trackpad accidentally and it was driving me INSANE! Thank goodness for Google search and for your post.

 

[jennvdh]

Thank you all! This has been driving me crazy! Thank you Thank you! I have the same cheap Toshiba laptop with the F5 key of uselessness. Thank You!!

i know this is an old thread but i came here looking for a solution only to realise that i was pressing F5 (to refresh web page) and it was actually disabling the mousepad. hope this helps some people

THANK YOU!! Thanks to your post I just noticed that the F5 key on my new cheap Toshiba laptop has an icon representing the trackpad on/off toggle. I was also trying to refresh pages and kept disabling the trackpad accidentally and it was driving me INSANE! Thank goodness for Google search and for your post.

 

[gloricle]

i know this is an old thread but i came here looking for a solution only to realise that i was pressing F5 (to refresh web page) and it was actually disabling the mousepad. hope this helps some people

Thanks for your help!!

Trackpad is now working again!! Yay.

 

[David OConnel]

I've had a similar problem and I suspect yours is caused by a part of the touchpad that, when tapped, disables it. Sometimes parts of the pad can become sensitive at all times to the slightest touch and this might be your problem. There's a setting you can try using to disable this feature in the Synaptics driver. If you go to your Windows 7 control panel, then to the mouse settings, there should be a tab in the "Mouse Properties" box there marked with the red Synaptics symbol and the words "Device Settings". Go to this tab, and you should see all your pointing devices (like external mice and the trackpad). Make sure the touchpad is highlighted in the device list, then click "Settings...", and you'll hopefully end up with a new window called something like "Properties for Synaptics Clickpad" or something.

I am using driver v16.2 on a fairly new computer, but I think if you double click the word "Tapping" on the left side of the latter window, another window will appear (or you might just have to click once on an old driver, I don't know). Anyway, if you bring up the Tapping settings, there'll be an option called "TouchPad Disable Zone settings", with a checkbox that allows you to "Double tap to enable or disable touchpad". Uncheck it and see if that solves your problem.

Good luck with both my solution and your laptop, as I'm not sure I have diagnosed you correctly, but no-one else has answered here so maybe it's worth a try. Many people see the disable zone as something helpful, but I had to desensitize mine.

Many thanks for this solution! It worked on my Toshiba Satellite P855.

 

[log4aman]

Go to Control Panel > Mouse > Device Settings. Click on "Reset Devices". You are done.

 

[boardshark]

HI just to say that if you go start, all programs, toshiba, tools and utilities then HW setup. On keyboard tab click standard f1-f12 mode. This turns off the special functions i.e. F5 turning mouse pad off. If you want the special functions you will then need to press the FN key. Hope this helps everyone.