Mark's Blog

Well I have been having issues with my laptop for a while as I have been unable to use the trackpad. I thought it was just a Linux funny with a rogue update or similar but it wasn’t a really bad problem as I have a trackball that I normally use. As you can imagine this is tedious if just wanting to browse in bed or about the house so thought tonight I am going to fix this problem once and for all. I searched via google tried various solutions I found all to no avail so thought I would just boot to windows for a change. Now I am guessing you can see where this is going…

So windows vista loads…eventually and I try to click on my portrait to login and as you have probably guessed the trackpad wasn’t working. So I finally had the proof that I wasn’t looking for that it wasn’t a Linux problem. My next assumption (you would think by this time I would stop assuming) was that the problem MUST be hardware related(by this time I have given up on windows and snuck of back to Linux) and I dutifully loaded up Google and searched for “Acer aspire 5720 trackpad doesnt work” . I cant remember which link it was in the list now but it was in the top 10 finally gave me the answer, Press Function and F7. It was as simple as that! No need modprobe this that and the other, read device entries or edit half a dozen text files!

It really was a case of Doh! And is a perfect example of why even those of use who consider ourselves to be knowledgeable users and administrators should sometimes look for the easy solution first! Be very careful with your assumptions people you could waste an awful lot of time!

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