The touchpad on your Lenovo laptop can stop working for a variety of reasons. If you don’t have an external mouse and rely only on the touchpad for navigation, it becomes essential to solve the problem of a locked touchpad. Aside from manually disabling the touchpad, it’s also possible to have some sort of device conflict or corrupt driver issue. Take a look at our guide for restoring the functionality of the touchpad on your Lenovo laptop.
1. Check to see whether the touchpad is locked through the keyboard
Many Lenovo laptops allow for enabling or disabling the touchpad by pressing a specific key, typically one of the F keys such as F6 or F8. Hold down the Fn key together with the designated key showing a touchpad icon. If the touchpad is still locked, try out the next solution. Connect an external mouse to make navigation through menus easier.
2. Go to Settings > Devices > Touchpad
You will see a simple switch that should be activated for the touchpad to work as expected.
3. Try a reboot
Restarting the PC can often take care of any technical issues that may disable touchpad functionality.
4. Navigate to Hardware and Sound > Mouse in Control Panel
Look in this section for an option that will lock the touchpad when you add an external device such as a mouse. This could be the reason for a disabled touchpad so make sure this kind of option isn’t active.
5. Open Device Manager
Updating the driver can fix the issue of a disabled touchpad. Search for Device Manager and navigate to “Human Interface Devices” where you will see all the pointing devices. Find the touchpad and right-click on “Update Driver”.
6. Let Windows Update perform a check
Outdated laptop firmware can cause issues with the touchpad. If that’s the case, it’s recommended to open Windows Update and verify whether you need to install some new updates.
7. Get in touch with Lenovo’s customer support
If none of these solutions work to unlock the touchpad on the laptop, it’s safe to say that you’re dealing with a more serious hardware issue. Therefore, it’s recommended to contact Lenovo’s support service to repair your device.