My daughter's laptop track mouse thingy is failing occasionally. Now while she could attach a portable mouse its not ideal for college sat at in a lecture room etc so I am going to try and fix it. I figure it could be dirt etc in a connector but before I open it up which is a lot of screws on this particular model (Compaq CQ61), are these track mouse thingys (don't know the word!) serviceable? It is the position control rather than the buttons.

Thanks in advance

Adam

The part is called a trackpad/touchpad, it's certainly worth a look but I suspect it's likely it's faulty and needs replaced - it's usually integrated into the palm rest so you need to replace the whole thing:

 

http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2050601.m570.l1313.TR0.TRC0.H0.XCompaq+CQ61+palmrest&_nkw=Compaq+CQ61+palmrest&_sacat=0

 

The main annoyance is that it's not an easy part to access and usually needs most of the laptop to be dismantled.

 

John

Thanks John, I half suspected so looking at it. But that is very helpful, cheers.

There's normally a hot key for toggling it on and off. If she does that a few times, does it fix the problem?

Thanks but not quite sure - is it toggling on/off the trackpad itself you mean? Never heard of that!!!

my track pad has a small divot in the top left corner, double tap it and it shuts of the track pad.

Will have to check cheers

Some of them, if they get dirt down the side it can cause them to become unresponsive / random mouse pointer jumping about, but otherwise it might just be easier to replace the whole palm rest.

 

I have to be honest and say that I have never heard of one failing.

Have you uninstalled it via device manager and then rebooted?

Thanks all. Yes gadgetman tried that. Its an intermittent thing that only occurs occasionally and that I am pretty sure is a hardware issue. I will probably try replacing the palm rest as suggested given its not so expensive to pick them up on eBay.

Laptops are a **** to take apart and fix.

 

Unless you're confident you can put it back together again just leave it and buy a mouse.

 

BUT I also suggest you uninstall and reinstall the trackpad drivers. Also do a general clean up of windows with Malwarebytes etc. you might fins it's just a software problem.

Have tried the software angle with not much joy sadly...