Gateway MT6840: Synaptics Touchpad stopped working

[Minus]

Hello,

I want to thank in advance for any responses I get to this thread.

I have a Gateway laptop model MT6840. It has a Synaptics touchpad. A couple of days ago, the touchpad stopped working completely. I took my laptop out of sleep mode, and the icon for the touchpad in the system tray was simply gone. I checked Control Panel: Mouse: Device Settings for the Synaptic touchpad, but all options are merely grayed out, and the device does not register on the computer anymore.

I believe I have tried almost everything. I first tried rebooting. I then tried disconnecting my external mouse and then rebooting. Then I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the driver from the Gateway website. I looked on Google, but found nothing of use. Alas, none of these things have worked.

This is a bit frustrating because, although I do have an external mouse, it is much more convenient not to have to bring the external mouse around when I transport it. And since I'm a college student, I need to get around with my laptop quite often.

I don't believe it is anything related to the hardware because it stopped working when the software (apparently) magically disappeared. I would really like to solve this problem.

If anyone knows of anything, please let me know. If there is some detail I should mention that would help, please also let me know.

Thanks,
Minus

 

[Minus]

Well, I decided to reboot again and go into the BIOS. I did, changing absolutely nothing (even choosing the "discard changes" exit option), logged onto Windows, and the problem was solved.

I have no idea how that worked, but it did.

I can't find a delete thread option, so if an admin is reading this, go ahead and just delete this.