My touchpad had been cutting out occasionally, but restarting the laptop would temporarily bring it back. Device Manager showed a Code 10 warning. I tried uninstalling the touchpad driver and installing the driver from HP's website, but nothing helped. Now the touchpad no longer appears in Device Manager under either HID devices or Mice and other pointing devices. The laptop is an HP Omnibook 5 with a 16-inch display. What should I try next to determine whether this is a software problem or a hardware failure?
2 Answers
You can help separate a Windows driver problem from a hardware problem by booting the laptop from a live operating system, such as a Linux installation USB, without installing it. If the touchpad also fails there, that strongly points to hardware. If it works normally in the live environment, the issue is more likely related to Windows, firmware, or drivers.
Since the touchpad has completely disappeared from Device Manager after previously showing Code 10, the most likely causes are a hardware fault or a loose internal connection between the touchpad and the motherboard. At this point, software troubleshooting may not be enough and the laptop will probably need to be opened and inspected by a repair technician.
That makes sense. The difficult part is that there isn’t an HP service center in my city, so I may need to find an independent laptop repair shop.
It used to work intermittently, but now it has stopped working completely, so I’ll need to test it outside Windows if possible.