OK so I finally got round to sorting the daughters laptop. It's an acire aspire 1350 ( old machine I know). I did a system retore from the supplied discs and it all seems to be fine apart from the touchpad not working. It appears in the icons on the taskbar (left hand side) but does not work. The computer doesn't list it in the hardware part of the control panel ( control panel>sytem>devices etc etc)
When you go to Control panel> mouse> it doesnb't apperar in the pointing devices list either but there is a box for "device settings with the ointer icon (synaptics) on it, When you click on this you get the message

an exception occurred while trying to run "C:WINDOWSsystem32shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL"C:WINDOWSsystem32main.cpl",Mouse

I've plugged in a usb mouse and it works just fine but it'd be handy to have the pad working as well.

So what does the collective reckon I can do to sort this out.
As usual thanks in advance folks.

Disabled in the Bios?

?????LOL could be

how do I re enable it?? if it is that

normally you have to press a key or a sequence before it loads the os that launches into a bios settings menu where you can make sttings changes to date/time and hardware devices etc..

Nope nothing in there at all .
Press F2 to enter bios at start up I presume??
It lists all the hard drive and boot sequences etc.

Have a look through here:-

http://acerxp.net/publ/1-1-0-2

touch pad driver (if that is the problem) just over 1/2 way down....

HTH Fozzie

Edit to add :- have you gone to 'control panel' >> 'Mouse' and made sure the touch pad is selected in the drop down menu ...usually in the 'button' > 'configuration' page?

[Edited on 17-5-09 by Fozzie]

Thanks Fozzie but I'd already tried that driver this morning

Also the device does not show up on the list of pointers or mices

Oh dear.... not in the drop down list?

IIRC ..... Fn + F7 Touchpad toggle Turns the internal touchpad on and off...... on the Aspire 1350...have you tried that?

or

Can you add the driver.....Start > Control Panel > System > Device Manager > Mouse...right click, add driver ?

Fozzie

Well Fn and F7 does turn the touchpad off and on but nowt happens when it's on.

ETA I found it but the only way I can see it in device manager is in view> show hidden devices.
It has a yellow exclamation mark against it and in the properties tab it says "this device is not present, is not working properly, or does not have all it's drivers installed ( code24)

In the driver tab it has the correct and updated drivers as listed by fozzie.
The error mesage in my first post makes me think there may be a registry error ( BUT WHERE)

[Edited on 17/5/09 by omega 24 v6]

Oh dear...again.....

again....IIRC,.... on one of the Acer discs, there are drivers....... .dll is a driver file.......for the touchpad..... (oo it was along time ago)......

I really don't know what to suggest next....

Have you tried dropping graememk a u2u?

Sorry....
Fozzie

Ok...one last thing I can think of.....

Open 'My Computer' open C ..assuming C is your main drive..... > Program Files ...look for a folder 'Synaptics' open that see if that has a folder called SynTP, open that and look for an .exe called InstNT .......

Fozzie

It's there OK but it won't run.
Just to recap as my original post the error dll mesage would seem to be the problem i think. But getting into the registry is way to advanced for me unless i'm spoken through it.
She'll just have to use the mouse just now I suppose.
I tried uninstalling the hardware but everytime I reboot it's still there and not working.

Thanks for everyones help so far anyways.
Give me an oily old engine anytime.