It’s frustrating to navigate your Acer laptop without a touchpad, especially when you don’t have a spare mouse. However, this seems to be a common occurrence in an Acer Aspire 5 laptop.
If you’re in this present situation, perhaps your touchpad isn’t responding efficiently or has become entirely unresponsive, you’ve come to the right place.
This article will liberate you from this problem as it contains proven methods to tackle it. At the end of the reading, you’ll be able to fix your Acer Aspire 5 Touchpad without having to rely on an external mouse.
Let’s quickly explore the possible causes before delving into the quickest method of fixing it.
Acer Aspire 5 Touchpad Not Working: Possible Causes
Many factors can contribute to this problem on your Acer laptop. Below are the most likely causes:
- Your touchpad is turned off
- Incorrect booting
- Incompatible or outdated drivers
- A problem with BIOS settings
- Faulty touchpad
Acer Aspire 5 Touchpad Not Working: DIY Fixes
Having listed the possible reasons, let’s explore the quickest methods of solving the problem. However, you must get an external mouse for some methods because you will need to navigate to some settings.
1. Enable Your Touchpad
Your Acer laptop has a function that allows users to turn off the touchpad with a shortcut quickly. While operating your computer, you might have accidentally triggered the shortcut to disable your touchpad. You’ll need to activate it again to be able to use it. There are two ways of doing this. Follow along as we explain both methods.
Through The Keyboard
You can quickly use a shortcut key to switch on your laptop touchpad. Simply press the Fn key and the touchpad icon (F6 or F7) simultaneously. The touchpad icon always has the illustration of a finger on a touchpad.
Through The Control Panel
You can use the control panel to activate your touchpad as follows:
- Press the Windows + R keys to start the Run dialog box
- Input control.exe inside the command and press Enter to enter the Control Panel window
- Select the Hardware and Sound option
- Click on Mouse and Touchpad option
- Select Additional Mouse settings to enter the Mouse properties window.
- Select the mouse device and click on Enable Device
- Press Apply and then Ok.
Exit the Control Panel menu and check to see if your touchpad is now working.
2. Restart Your Laptop
Your laptop touchpad has device drivers, depending on its functionality. During the booting process, your Windows OS might not load correctly and can’t run smoothly with the touchpad drivers.
Consequently, it will affect the touchpad functionality. Restarting your laptop might resolve this problem and fix your touchpad. Another reliable approach is to re-insert the laptop battery before the boot process. Therefore:
- Ensure your laptop is still powered on. If it’s plugged in, remove the power cord from the socket
- Remove its battery without turning the laptop off
- Leave it idle for about half an hour
- Reattach the battery again and turn the computer on
Afterward, check if the touchpad is now working. Suppose the problem remains, continue reading.
3. Reinstall Or Update Your Touchpad Drivers
Perhaps the touchpad driver loaded correctly, and it could be that you’re using an outdated or corrupted driver. Among common causes of the touchpad problem is an outdated or corrupted driver.
The driver-related problem can result from missing or corrupt system files or, sometimes, recent system updates. You will need to reinstall or update your touchpad driver so it can work properly again.
You can reinstall your Acer Touchpad Driver as follows:
- Press Windows + R key to start the Run dialog box
- Input devmgmt.msc and press Ok to jump to the Device Manager window
- From the Device Manager window, you’ll see the list of devices available, expand “Mice and other pointing devices.”
- Right-click on either Synaptics or Elantech(depending on what you see)
- Now click on Uninstall device from the menu
- Confirm that you want to select the driver software
- Click on Uninstall option for final confirmation
You should then restart your laptop once the driver uninstallation process is completed. Your laptop Windows will automatically restore the driver you deleted.
Check if your touchpad is responsive. If it isn’t, you will need to update your touchpad driver as follows:
- Go to the Start Menu and Search for Device Manager
- Click on the top result to jump to 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 driver version of your touchpad driver. Restart the laptop to effect the change. You can now check if your touchpad problem is resolved. If it’s not, continue reading.
4. Check BIOS Settings
Sometimes, your computer BIOS might refer to its older settings, preventing some programs from running correctly. If that’s the case, the touchpad could be among the restricted devices. Your laptop may not work correctly if it’s set to Advanced rather than Basic in the BIOS settings. You need to check and modify the BIOS settings. Follow the steps below to change the BIOS settings:
- Restart your laptop
- Immediately it starts booting, keep pressing either F1 or Del key to enter BIOS mode.
- Navigate to the Main tab with the arrow keys
- Find the touchpad and press Enter
- Choose the Basic option and save the changes.
- Now Exit the BIOS Mode and reboot normally.
Check if your laptop touchpad is now working.
5. Restore Windows
If the above method couldn’t fix your laptop, it is high time you restored your Windows. Typically, this is often the last resort, and you can follow the process below:
- Press Windows + X keys
- Click on Settings and select Update and Security
- From there, click on Recovery and select the Restart now option.
- The Restart Now option will reboot to the Windows Recovery Management screen.
- Click on Troubleshoot option, then Reset this PC option
- Choose which option you want the system to restore.
- Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the process.
When the process is complete, check your touchpad to see if it’s working.
6. See A Professional
If none of the methods above could fix your touchpad, it’s most likely that your touchpad is faulty. You can opt-in for an external mouse if you need to use your laptop urgently. Otherwise, you should contact a professional immediately for further diagnosis.