My touch pad seems to have lost its use and only an usb mouse plugged in works..have done system restore and that has not rectified problem.. have looked in my computor and it seems to think it is working ? I have a compaq laptop and using windows 7.

Some mouses stop responding if you do not use it for a few minutes. This is usually a battery saving feature. Usually all you got to do is use the scroll button to reactivate the mouse by scrolling up or down. This will bring the mouse back to life. When you change the ports you are actually doing the same thing (reactivating). Also check whether battery needs changing.

Before trying to repair a perceived hardware fault in the Tractor/Touch Pad/Track Pad/Mouse, you should consider simply plugging a USB Mouse into one of the USB ports, to see if that works by restoring your control of the desktop.

Alternative explanations for these symptoms include malware infections that have disabled your active desktop or a corruption of the Tractor/Track Pad/Touch Pad/Mouse Drivers. Try downloading, installing and purging any infection with Anti Malwarebytes, available free from:

www.malwarebytes.org

another issue could be Driver conflict or corruption. Try uninstalling all components of the drivers from add or Remove Programs or its equivalent in your Operating System and then restarting the notebook with the USB Mouse still connected and then reinstalling the relevant drivers from the Driver CD or downloading and installing the from the Support pages of the Acer website:

http://www.official-drivers.com/installer/?seed=acer&gclid=CM_R_M6MuawCFZJc4QodRxM0Hg


If the above does not restore the function of the faulty device, the sites below offer Disassembly Guides for this model of Notebook:

http://www.laptopguides.info/acer/acer-aspire-4720g-service-manual/

http://www.laptopguides.info/tag/acer-aspire-4720-disassembly/

Ermmm...wireless...new batteries???

seems you need to replace the touch pad, if you have warranty on it return it and have them replace the touch pad

plug in an external usb mouse and use that why bother deactivating touch pad just dont use it !! one day you might want to use it

If you are using XP, check your mouse settings under Control Panel. Make sure that your Touch Pad is enabled. If it is but it still won't work, have a mouse plugged into a USB port that will work correctly. Then download the latest driver from the Acer site for your touchpad. Uninstall the driver that is currently being used by your system. Then install the updated driver that you downloaded. This should allow you to use your Touch Pad. If not, you may have to take your laptop in for servicing.

Your Aspire has a Fn key down between the ALT and CTRL keys on the left. Push that and the F7 key (pretty sure that is the one). It turns the touchpad on and off.

Hope this helps.

the touch pad could have simply failed, most OS will interpret the mouse pad as a mouse to make it work, so if its gone its most likely not working, I mouse attached to a usb or one of the ps 2 connections might give you a mouse back temp you can replace most mouse pads.
hope this helps

Hi there,
Most of the time this is casued by a driver problem.
Some of the actual software installed to run the inbuilt mouse pad could of been lost or jsut outdated,
Remember microsoft operating systems are like a piece of space junk falling to earth, The closer they get to us the more falls of it untill its that unstable it just dissapears. Its intentionally built this way to create problems and get mroe people to update and buy newer systems and hardware :(

However Its worth visiting the acer website and look for your machines listed downloads,
Look through there for the mouse driver or sometimes they are calle HD input devices or Touchpads. Try downloading and reinstalling the driver again for that device.

You can check in device manager , start,controlpanel,system,hardware,devicemanager,
To see if there is a driver conflict.
Otherwise you could try rolling back your system to an earlier time when it did work through System restore, start, help,fixing a problem, using system restore to fix a problem, run system restore wizard,

This sometimes helps but make sure you have all the recently installed apps and other stuff you may of recently put on your pc as it literally rolls back the computer as if youve gone back a day or so.

Other wise if all else fails it could be a phisical hardware problem as in the touchpad has died. Usually te easiest solution is to do what youve allready done and just use a usb mouse unfortunetly.
If you have further trouble post back more info and i will try again to help,
Cheers
Steve.

Did something happen to the port setting? To find out, right click on My Computer, select properties, then select Device Manager. Does the Universal Serial Bus controller show up with no X's? Did it show up under the ? Other Devices section? You may need to uninstall and then reboot. Windows will discover new hardware and should find the driver for you.

That's my thoughts, so far. Except for the random shutdown. I am reminded of a guy who brought his system in with USB problems, no Internet, and a host of other problems. I discovered that almost all of his services had been disabled. Services and Applications, Services, also under Manage. I put my laptop on the same screen and restored his settings to match mine. Good luck in your hunt.