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My gf's touchpad has started acting funky since she hooked it up to a projector. It works alright on startup, but as soon as she gets out of the login screen, the cursor freezes up and she has to use a USB mouse.

I saw another thread for the same problem here, but none of the five solutions seemed to work.We're in 12.04

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teslasmoustache
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  • nvm, fixed. sudo apt-get install dconf-tools.

    open dconf-editor. Then go to setting-->org-->gnome-->settings-daemon-->peripherals-->touchpad and set touchpad-enabled to true.

     – teslasmoustache Oct 15 '12 at 05:03
  • if there is a yellow light on the touchpad , just tap it twice and u r done –  Mar 19 '14 at 07:24

3 Answers3

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The following is adapted from the OP's comment. It is a very similar technique, but not in the OP's own words.

  1. Install dconf-tools Install dconf-tools:

    sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install dconf-tools

  2. Open dconf Editor by pressing Alt+F2 and running dconf-editor (Or run it in a terminal.) or search for it in the Unity Dash.

  3. Go to:

    setting → org → gnome-settings-daemon → peripherals → touchpad

  4. Set the key touchpad-enabled to true.

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Eliah Kagan
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I had the same problem after closing a VLC session. With none of the dconf solutions working. The 'trackpad' was dashed as enabled, but was actually not working. I was under 12.04, and upgraded to 12.10 but still had the same issue.

I recovered the trackpad with the proto=imps option of modprobe:

sudo modprobe -r psmouse
sudo modprobe psmouse proto=imps

(c.f. https://superuser.com/questions/384885/ , no idea of what the proto option does!)

but then the 'two-finger scrolling' went 'off', and the 'trackpad' tab of the 'mouse&trackpad' entry in 'System Settings' just disappeared.

And still, the dconf editor says that the trackpad scroll method is two fingers...

I'll unfaithfully reboot ...

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frog_on_asus
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I had the same issue. The touchpad worked ok in gnome, but I installed Matte and a few other distros. On the login screen the touchpad worked fine, even if I also had a usb mouse plugged in. But when logging in to anything NOT gnome, the touchpad would be dead.

There are a few solutions that differ based on what went wrong.

In my case, I just had to add a startup command.

If your touchpad is dead, try entering the following in a terminal:

sudo synclient TouchPadOff=0

If the touchpad starts working again, then you need to add this to the startup apps. Depending on what desktop environment you use, the startup apps program differs a bit. It's pretty easy to find a program in Linux regardless of desktop as most have a search function built into the applications menu. Here's the one in Matte, called "Startup Applications":

enter image description here

To add the startup command just select the plus and enter the info as follows. The other two fields don't really matter, but enter the command in the command box. You can enter it without the sudo as below:

synclient TouchPadOff=0

Reboot and it should work great. Unfortunately you may have to do this in every desktop environment you install. KDE might work without this added command. But so far every desktop environment I have tried require this for the touchpad to work except for gnome/unity.

user28788
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