I disabled my laptop touchpad and now can't enable it

[rh0000]

I have a Toshiba Satellite A100-033 running Vista Home Basic. I mostly use
the laptop as a desk top replacement and, as I dislike using the touchpad, I
disabled it, and instead I use an external mouse via one of the USB ports.

On my laptop the standard way to disable the touchpad is by simultaneously
pressing the Fn key and the F9 key. However, to be honest, I am not sure
whether I did in fact disable the touchpad by this means, or whether I used
some other means (if it was by some other means then I have forgotten what
this was). Recently I wished to re-enable the touchpad so that I could use
the laptop outside the house without having to take my external mouse with me
as well. However, I found that pressing Fn + F9 did not re-enable the
touchpad and I now can't use the touchpad at all.

If I go into mouse properties (in control panel), this tells me that my
synaptics pointing device is enabled. If I go into device manager and look at
"mice", I am told that my touchpad is working properly.

All this makes me suspect that the problem is not a hardware fault but that
I have altered some setting, with the result that my touchpad is permanently
disabled until I change the setting back to its original state.

Any suggestions?

 

[JerryM]

Something to try:

On the Start - Run line, type SERVICES.MSC and hit enter.
scroll down and look for touch pad,
If it is on the list, right click it and set it to automatic.

 

[rh0000]

Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately I couldn't find any occurrence of a
touchpad under services.msc, so your suggestion didn't work. But I do have a
feeling that originally I may have disabled the touchpad by changing some
setting or other, so I feel your suggestion was on the right lines, even
though it didn't do the trick. Thanks once again for giving my problem some
thought.

 

[JerryM]

Another thing to try is to Restore to an earlier date, if you have one old
enough.

Good Luck
Jerry

Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately I couldn't find any occurrence of
a
touchpad under services.msc, so your suggestion didn't work. But I do have
a
feeling that originally I may have disabled the touchpad by changing some
setting or other, so I feel your suggestion was on the right lines, even
though it didn't do the trick. Thanks once again for giving my problem
some
thought.

<Snip>

 

[JerryM]

The last thing I can think of is to type SFC /SCANNOW on the start -run
line.
This will correct or replace any missing or corrupt files on your operating
system.

Jerry

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

I suggest typing "cmd" first to open a command window and running sfc there.
Just a suggestion.

 

[JerryM]

Thanks, Colin,

My mind is a little bit forgetful,
Jerry

 

[rh0000]

Thanks for your further thoughts. I don't have a restore point going back far
enough. I've tried to run SFC /SCANNOW. However, if I have no space between
SFC and the slash, I'm told that Windows can't find the file. If there is a
space (as you have in your suggestion), then a black "DOS" type box flashes
onto my desktop for a brief moment, but too brief for me to be able to say
what it says. So that's drawn a blank as well. But again, my thanks for your
efforts.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

Type "cmd" + Enter in the Start/Search box and then run "sfc /scannow" in
the command window. Close the command window with "exit" when done.