So, upon further inspection, I'm not sure the System Restore ever successfully ran. I tried to run it again, and this time I noticed when the computer restarted, there was a message saying that System Restore failed to complete. It said there was an error deleting some file or folder. Unfortunately I've lost the window with the message so I'm not sure exactly what the error was.
What are my next steps?
If you laptop [Notebook] is like most, my wife's, there is a hardware thing to disable/enable the Touchpad, may be a combination of Fn plus another F key to use, not a Windows thing as it works with any Operating System. I had a client whose housekeeper inadvertently would get it turned off in her cleaning duties. My wife doesn't like it on as her thumbs make undesired things happen.
Doesn't the fact that the mouse driver does not show up in Device Manager suggest that this is something beyond an inadvertent enable/disable switch?
Like, in the past I could go into the mouse settings and enable/disable the touchpad that way. But now I cannot even get to those mouse settings - Windows is not detecting any touchpad at all.
As said above- please boot to BIOS and just check to see if there's an option related to e.g. Internal Pointing Device or similar.
There may not be one- it depends on HP and your particular BIOS.
Now, while you're in the BIOS - does your touchpad work then? (Not dependent on Windows driver then).
If so, it's not a hardware issue.
Last edited by dalchina; 17 Mar 2021 at 11:55.
Alternative way to enter BIOS is as follows:
Start button -> Settings -> Updates & Security -> Recovery -> Advanced startup -> Restart now
Once you enter blue screen choose UEFI Firmware Settings option and it should lead you into BIOS.
In BIOS you're looking for "Onboard mouse" option.
There are no mouse settings in BIOS
The touchpad also did not work in BIOS
Quote
