My laptop locks up and freezes when I use the touchpad, but never freezes when I use the attached mouse
Hi, I’ve been experiencing lock-up or freezing problems with my laptop for about 6 months. The model is Satellite A55-S306. I’ve spoke with a few repair shops and they insisted I must have a virus or adware. My antivirus is up to date and detects no virus, also I’ve downloaded Spybot Search and Destroy and it detects no adware. Here is the odd thing we’ve noticed the last few days. I always use the touchpad and my fiancé always uses an attached mouse. The laptop never freezes up when using the attached mouse. The last 2 days I’ve attached the mouse but continued to use the touchpad—-no freezing for hours. Detach the mouse instant freeze???? Does this make sense??? Have you ever come across this problem before or any ideas??
Yeah, that’s a very odd problem. I think that if it would be a hardware problem, then the laptop would freeze up regardless the attached mouse. It’s possible that you have some kind of software problem. Not necessary a virus or an adware, may be just a corrupted driver or corrupted system file. But it doesn’t make any sense why the touchpad works fine when the external mouse attached.
Here’s what I would try to do to troubleshoot, detect and eliminate the problem:
1. Go the Device Manager and locate Mice and other pointing devices entry. Click on “+” to expand it and uninstall PS/2 Compatible Mouse. Restart the laptop and see if the problem is fixed.
2. Restart the laptop in Safe Mode by pressing F8 key as soon as Toshiba logo appears on the screen and selecting the Safe Mode line. If the touchpad works fine in Safe Mode, then you have a piece of software that conflicts with the touchpad in Normal Mode. Go to step 5.
3. Another troubleshooting step (more advanced) is to boot laptop with Knoppix CD (live Linux CD). This OS runs directly from the CD bypassing Windows installation on the hard drive. If you still experience the same problem in Linux then the problem is not related to Windows. Knoppix CD will boot the laptop into a Windows like environment where you can use the touchpad.
4. I would also try to reflash/upgrade the laptop BIOS.
5. The final step would be reloading the hard drive back to original Toshiba defaults. You’ll have to boot the laptop from the recovery CD and follow the wizard. Reloading the hard drive will erase all your personal data, so do not forget to back it up before you run the restore CD/DVD.
If re-flashing the BIOS and reloading the hard drive doesn’t help, then you might have a hardware related problem.
August 14th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
I have a dell inspiron 4000 laptop. got it off ebay. The mouse sometimes is erractic…it needs a good bang on the cover to stop it moving all around…any ideas what is causing this?
July 22nd, 2008 at 11:12 am
The reason why the Acer Aspire laptops freeze is the update right after SP3 , not for sure which one but that is the reason why it freezes !!
June 7th, 2008 at 6:57 am
Hi Guys,
I have a Presario 2500 lap top and I placed a new hard drive 1 month ago at one of the computer technicians in my area. It has been now 1 week which it freezes on a particular web site such as domain.com.au
Any suggestions I will much appreciate.
Thanks Klodi
May 15th, 2008 at 10:36 pm
Hi
I touch the pad: the pointer moves randomly with the power pluged, it’s ok on battery.
I select ‘power savings’ and reduced brightnes as when it’s on battery; did not help.
Is it clearly enough a a hw issue? (internal power supply, adaptor, touchpad). Or I should still reinstall the driver? (I’ll look for an adaptor too)
Thanks for sharing your expertize.
May 14th, 2008 at 7:15 am
Melissa,
Maybe the touchpad is simply disabled? On Toshiba laptops you can enable or disable the touchpad if you hold down Fn key and at the same time press on F9. Try this first.
May 14th, 2008 at 3:25 am
Hi,
I have a Satellite u305-s5077. The touchpad stopped working once I started my laptop. The external mouse works and when I checked my control panel about the mouse, the touch option is not available.
April 3rd, 2008 at 7:21 pm
I have A-Note laptop which working fine until recently. Synaptics touchpad only working when I run on batteries. When I plugged AC cord, touchpad is freeze (but touchpad button was working fine). When I unplugged AC cord, touchpad was ok again. Does anybody have solution?
March 13th, 2008 at 5:59 am
For anyone with problems on the tecra m2, curser jumping, i have the same problem and couldnt figure it out until we dislodged some crumbs underneath the “end” key, stupid, but it worked
February 25th, 2008 at 11:52 pm
I have a major problem. My spyware remover conducted a scan and I followed the paths on the scan report
to see if I can delete some of the infected files.
The problem is that i deleted some of the files
in the folder “c:system 32/drivers”. I know I deleted
the synaptics file. Which i think has caused my
touch pad to stop working. I connected an external
hp mouse to my laptop but it does not work. so I cant move my pointer in no possible way!!
whats going on and what can i do? I have tried
pushing the little button on top of the touchpad,
I tried pushing fn+f9, and connecting an external mouse. I have also tried starting the laptop in all the forms of safe mode and clicked on the “last good configuration” option. nothing works. help.
my laptop is a hp pavilion ze4600. thanks
February 24th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
I have an HP Pavilionzv5000 & sometimes the touchpad freezes. After I reboot it starts to work again. Any suggestions as the keyboard freezes as well.
Thx
Dave
February 24th, 2008 at 6:36 am
Frances,
Did you check if the USB port is working properly? There shouldn’t be any problem using an external USB mouse, usually it’s detected by the operating system and the driver is installed automatically.
Find out if you have any touch pad utility in the control panel. Go through the settings. I believe on some laptops you can enable or disable internal/external pointing devices. Make sure the external pointing device is enabled.
Check the BIOS setup menu, it’s possible that you can find settings for the external pointing device in there.
February 23rd, 2008 at 9:15 pm
hi
my laptop has a touch pad (of course) but i want to use a USB mouse instead . i no how to disable the touch pad but cant get the USB mouse to work
any ideas??
January 27th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
James Dunn,
Did it come with the power button board (7 button board) or you transferred this board from the old cover? I know that in some cases this board might cause some very weird problems with the keyboard. I’m just guessing that it can affect the touchpad too.
This is really strange problem. You replaced motherboard, top cover, touchpad, reinstalled OS ans still experience the same problem with the touchpad? Weird!
January 25th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
I have a Toshiba m45 s229, I bought cheap on ebay for parts for because it would shut down after 5 minutes, The person who had it before took it apart and applied more grease to the heat sink, which fixed the problem, but when he put it back together he could not get the touchpad cable back together, so i bought it like that. but any way I took it apart and hooked up the mouse cable, computer works but touchpad was funny, it moved all of the place and then after a couple of minutes it would freeze and lock up, works fine with a external mouse. but I need the touchpad to work. put a fresh install of the orginal operating ststem, no go, so I changed the whole top base which had a touchpad and cable with it, did the same thing so i bought a used motherboard for this system, put the board together did the same thing, I was thinking this was software I downloaded new drivers form the website. After all of this I found out something, if I booted it up on the battery the mouse would work great, but as soon as I plug the a/c adapter in, it would act funny I could not contol the mouse it would not move right, on the mousepad icon on the bottom of the screen in the toolbar it would say that I was applying pressure but i was not, and after a couple of minutes it work freeze up and quit working all together, worked fine on battery power, the buttons worked fine the whole time, the mouse did not move as long as i did not touch it. I Checked in device manger and it says there is no problems and drivers are installed correct. seems funny I know, changed every part. but a/c adapter, tried on a another machine and works great. Does any one have any ideas or know how to fix this problem.
January 13th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Aaron,
I think it jumps to the cursor because you have the touch pad tapping enabled. Disable the touch pad tapping option.
January 12th, 2008 at 7:05 am
Ive got a hp6325 notebook and the touchpad has gone bonkers, its either over sensitive or doesnt move at all and if you put your finger on the pad and dont move the pointer shakes and moves across the screen slightly.
ive used the supplied software and adjusted various settings but nothing, in fact if you set sensitivity to half or more it wont move at all!!!
any ideas??
January 10th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
when i am typing away on my compaq laptop it will sudenly stopp and jump to where the curor is, think i have a sensity touchpad does anyone know how to fix this
thanks in advance
December 26th, 2007 at 9:29 pm
Hii guyz, well im using the acer travelmate 2310 laptop. The keyboard n d taouch pad freezes, right after i plug in the battery, if i took the battery out, it works perfectly, what could be the reason? I also tried by formating the laptop, yet it remains the same, plz i having a big time prob here, kindly i need help from all of you… Thanx guyzzz…
December 24th, 2007 at 9:58 pm
Hi,laptop freak. Am using a compaq presario v2000 laptop. The os is windows vista. Few days back i installed an external mouse on my laptop. Since thn my keypad and mousepad arnt working.I cant acess anythng witout them. Plz help.Thnx in advance.
December 7th, 2007 at 3:29 am
my Acer laptop it work properly before i format it
After that its keyboard and touchpad do not work but still it will work in save mode
December 5th, 2007 at 12:43 am
Jon,
I’ve done the same mistake before, I accidentally pulled the touchpad cable from the touchpad.
I published your question here: After I took apart Toshiba Tecra M3 the touchpad stopped working.
I think other people can experience the same problem with their Tecra M3 and Tecra M2 laptops.
December 4th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
Hi
I rather stupidly took apart my Toshiba Tecra M3 to clean the heat sink. Upon reassembly the touchpad was frozen, upon which I discovered that the touchpad cable was not connected. It is connected to the motherboard but I cant seem to find where it attaches on the touchpad end?
Regards
December 1st, 2007 at 6:33 pm
The HP Pavilion VD4150US I am using right now has an issue with the areas on either side of the touchpad where you rest your wrists while typing… The computer often freezes unless I am putting pressure on these areas. Sometimes when I turn the power on, the BIOS screen doesn’t even come up unless I press on these areas. It started with sometimes when I was typing the letters would not show up until I touched the pad, then they would appear (kind of the opposite of “Hide cursor while typing”). I opened the laptop yesterday (got the service manual at HP.com), and re-seated all the internal cables. This helped a bit, but I still have to apply considerable pressure at times. I’m not sure if replacing the touchpad/case is a cost-effective solution (it’s over 2 years old).
Last year at work we had a Dell laptop that would totally turn off (like removing the battery without shutting down) when we barely touched the wrist rest areas. I suspect maybe the thin plastics they use between components may lose their insulating abilities (not sure if due to environment or use or some other reason) over time.
November 30th, 2007 at 11:45 am
three weeks ago i purchased a hp G7010EA laptop and it’s been absolutly fine untill yesterday when the touchpad and keyboard froze, meaninig i have no option but to click on the power button and but it into sleep and then click it again to awake it, this sometimes works (meaning the touchpad and keyboard unfreeze) but not all the time, meaning i have to turn of so it restarts. however its not very long (sometime less than 5 minutes before it happens again and i have to repeat the above process) funny thing when i connect my usb mouse the cursor moves again, but the keyboard still remains frozen. any help will be gratefully appreciated
November 15th, 2007 at 2:32 pm
my laptop keypad mouse is frozen. even when i use my external mouse, it will not do anything
November 13th, 2007 at 11:32 pm
Vishal,
Make sure you have the latest BIOS version installed on your laptop. Update the BIOS if needed. I’ve published your question here and started a new thread.
November 12th, 2007 at 9:22 am
i have DELL XPS m1330 Laptop with windows vista home edition installed as factory setting. its working fine. but i wanted to install windows XP and same time i wanted to preserve my Windows vista copy too. so i bought a new internal HDD and just replaced the original internal harddisk with new one and installed windows Xp Professional on this new HDD. but now problem is after working for few mins my laptop just freze.i have macafee installed and it doent show any viruses or edware or any malacious stuff.so i guess its some software issues with my WINDOWS XP copy or touchpad problem.i tried to work in safe mode and touchpad and keyboard works fine in safemode but not in normal mode. attaching a mouse doesn’t work either. I even reinstalled the WINDOWS XP quite a few times,but same problem persists it works for a bit then doesn’t work again.
i guess as my system works fine with windows vista and even with windows xp in safe mode, its not hardware problem.
i get problem when i work in windows Xp normal mode, so i guess should i try with different copy of windows XP ?what should i do?
October 5th, 2007 at 1:14 pm
I have an HP 6100 – I use this for work and keep it in my truck – I have it connected to the AC power outlet – when i connect it to this outlet my touchpad mouse goes crazy and will not stop “moving” wildly until i disconnect the power? Anyone know of anything that could be causing this?
October 5th, 2007 at 6:13 am
My accer laptop work properly when I format it the touch pad and it keyboard of my laptop is not working would you help me please
September 18th, 2007 at 11:02 pm
Catherine Wilson,
You’ll find my suggestion in this post: Touchpad stopped working after I spilled a drink on it