Gateway NV59 touchpad no workie

Friend's trackpad - does nothing

Has an old Dell mouse plugged in and works fine - trackpad does absolutely nothing.

Everything I find says to open up Mouse properties and go to the Device Settings tab - that'd be great if there were a Device Settings tab, but it does not exist.

Have removed the Alps driver, downloaded and installed the newest one from Gateway - still nada - anyone have any other ideas?

I have also already read the owner's manual for this machine and there is nothing in it about any keyboard shortcuts for disabling and re-enabling the touchpad.

If you're looking to google, done been there also - but I'm old, I could be blind.

Little bit late responding.... but have you tried going into the BIOS setup menu and see if the trackpad has been disabled? I'm not familiar with Gateway machines but some notebooks have that setting in the BIOS.

Regards.

Just so you know, ended up calling Gateway as it was only a couple of months old. They had a bad batch of track pads and replaced the notebook straight away when told what the issue was.

Thanks for posting the solution. I was just reminded when I read your post that Gateway computers were once called "Cow Boxes". Remember those Gateway ads with the spotted cows? Who owns them now anyway?

Regards.

lol - Never heard the "cow boxes" one. Remember the Gateway stores they experimented with in the mid to late 90's. The pre-cusor to the Apple stores, I'd say.

Went and checked them out a couple of times, but by the time they had opened them, I had already moved on to building my own rigs and couldn't get me to touch an off-the shelf system with a 10' pole. My Mac has been my only off-the-shelf system for the last 16 years now.

At that time, I looked on Gateway the same as I looked at my first and last x86 off-the-shelf rig - the old Packard Bell. Man, I was not happy with that one when I discovered I couldn't upgrade the video card (to play my newest game) because it used a proprietary riser card and nothing else would fit in it.