Navigating an Acer laptop without a touchpad can be frustrating, especially if you don’t have a spare mouse. Unfortunately, this seems to be a common issue with the Acer Aspire 5 laptop. If you’re experiencing an unresponsive or inefficient touchpad, you’ve come to the right place for help.
This article provides proven methods to help you solve the problem of an unresponsive Acer Aspire 5 touchpad, freeing you from the need to use an external mouse. By the end of this article, you will be able to fix the issue. But before we discuss the solutions, let’s first explore the possible causes.
Acer Aspire 5 Touchpad Not Working: Possible Causes
There are several factors that could be causing problems with the touchpad on your Acer laptop. Here are some of the most common ones:
- The touchpad may be turned off
- Incorrect booting
- Outdated or incompatible drivers
- Issues with BIOS settings
- A faulty touchpad.
Acer Aspire 5 Touchpad Not Working: DIY Fixes
Now that we’ve listed the possible causes, let’s explore the quickest ways to solve the problem. However, for some of these methods, you will need an external mouse to navigate to certain settings.
1. Enable your touchpad
Your Acer laptop has a feature that lets you quickly disable the touchpad using a shortcut. While using your computer, you may have accidentally triggered this shortcut, causing your touchpad to become disabled. To use it again, you need to activate it.
There are two ways to do this:
Using the keyboard
You can quickly activate your laptop touchpad by pressing the Fn key and the touchpad icon (F6 or F7) simultaneously. The touchpad icon always has an illustration of a finger on a touchpad.
Using the control panel
You can activate your touchpad using the control panel by following these steps:
- Press the Windows + R keys to open the Run dialog box
- Type “control.exe” into the command prompt and press Enter to open the Control Panel
- Select the “Hardware and Sound” option
- Click on “Mouse and Touchpad”
- Select “Additional Mouse Settings” to open the Mouse Properties window
- Select the mouse device and click on “Enable Device”
- Click on “Apply” and then “OK”
- Exit the Control Panel menu and check if your touchpad is now working.
2. Restart your laptop
Your laptop touchpad has device drivers that depend on its functionality. During the booting process, your Windows OS may not load correctly and may not run smoothly with the touchpad drivers.
This can affect the touchpad’s functionality. Restarting your laptop may resolve this issue and fix your touchpad. Another reliable approach is to remove and reinsert the laptop battery before the boot process.
Follow these steps:
- Make sure your laptop is still turned on. If it’s plugged in, unplug it from the socket
- Remove the battery without turning off the laptop
- Leave it idle for about half an hour
- Reinsert the battery and turn on your computer
Afterward, check if your touchpad is now working. If the problem persists, continue reading.
3. Reinstalling or Updating Touchpad Drivers
One common cause of touchpad problems is an outdated or corrupted driver. It’s possible that the touchpad driver loaded correctly, but it’s not functioning correctly due to an outdated or corrupted driver.
This driver-related problem can occur due to missing or corrupt system files or, sometimes, recent system updates. To fix this issue, you need to reinstall or update your touchpad driver.
Here’s how you can reinstall your Acer Touchpad driver:
- Press the Windows + R keys to open the Run dialog box.
- Type “devmgmt.msc” and click Ok to open the Device Manager window.
- From the Device Manager window, you’ll see the list of available devices. Expand “Mice and other pointing devices.”
- Right-click on either Synaptics or Elantech (depending on what you see).
- Click on “Uninstall device” from the menu.
- Confirm that you want to select the driver software.
- Click on “Uninstall” for final confirmation.
- Once the driver uninstallation process is completed, restart your laptop. Your Windows will automatically restore the driver you deleted.
Check if your touchpad is responsive. If it’s not, you need to update your touchpad driver.
- Go to the Start Menu and search for Device Manager.
- Click on the top result to open the Device Manager window.
- Expand “Mice and other pointing devices.”
- Right-click on either Synaptics or Elantech (depending on what you see).
- Click on “Update Driver Software.”
- Let Windows automatically search for the latest available updates.
- Download and install the latest version of your touchpad driver.
- Restart your laptop to effect the change.
- Check if your touchpad problem is resolved. If it’s not, continue reading.
4. Check BIOS settings
To troubleshoot touchpad issues, it’s important to check the computer’s BIOS settings. If the BIOS is set to older settings, it may prevent certain programs from running properly, including the touchpad. If this is the case, the touchpad may be among the restricted devices.
To change the BIOS settings, follow these steps:
- Restart your laptop.
- As it starts booting, press either the F1 or Del key to enter BIOS mode.
- Use the arrow keys to navigate to the Main tab.
- Find the touchpad and press Enter.
- Choose the Basic option and save the changes.
- Exit the BIOS mode and reboot the laptop normally.
- Check if the touchpad is now working properly.
5. Restore Windows
If the previous steps did not resolve the issue with your touchpad, you may need to consider restoring your Windows operating system. This is typically a last resort and can be done by following these steps:
- Press the Windows key and the X key simultaneously.
- Click on Settings and select Update and Security.
- Select the Recovery option and click on Restart now.
- Your laptop will now reboot to the Windows Recovery Management screen.
- Click on Troubleshoot, then choose the Reset this PC option.
- Select the desired option for restoring the system and follow the on-screen instructions to complete the process.
- Once the process is complete, check if your touchpad is now functioning properly.
6. See a Professional
If your touchpad still does not work, it is likely that the touchpad is faulty, and you may need to seek professional assistance. Alternatively, you can use an external mouse if you need to use your laptop urgently.
