Gaaaaaaaaaaaa! I accidentally disabled the touch pad on my dell laptop (the lap top was falling off my lap and I grabbed it and must have hit the exact keys required to turn it off) and I can’t get it back on and don’t have a mouse. Being as you guys are the smartest in the world someone must know how to enable it.
Likely the function (Fn) key plus one of the F-keys. Look on your keyboard: is there any key with an icon that seems evocative of a touchpad (likely resembling a rectangle with a hand on it)?
It’s an Inspiron N5030. I managed to get to the control panel and it says the touch pad is on but the pointer won’t move and the icon on the bottom right has an X on it.
I there’s a key that maybe looks like a touch pad but when I do the function key with it, nothing happens.
Arg!
ETA Just found out that X has nothing to do with the touch pad.
Can you call Dell customer support? My roommate in college had a Dell laptop and she was on the phone with them every couple of weeks and it didn’t cost her anything.
For future reference, if you look at your touchpas kinda sieways (so you have a slight glare on the surface) you’ll see a dot in the upper left-hand corner of the touch pad. If you tap that dot, you can disable/enable the touch pad.