Solved! A Toshiba laptop missing the device touchpad.

[healer]

I have a Toshiba Satellite Pro C50-B laptop Serial 8E190152P running Windows 7 Pro.

The touchpad has stopped working. It used to work. Now I can't find the touchpad in the device manager or anywhere in the system.

I downloaded the driver trying to install. It came back with an error message saying incorrect driver so I couldn't install.

Please help!

 

[AlHuneke]

Sounds like it is likely a HW failure. Most laptops have vendor diagnostic SW available (often installed on a separate disk partition--you just need to figure out how to get to it). I would run the diagnostic and see what that says. Have you ever taken the machine apart? There is a very small chance the connector is loose.

 

[healer]

I've never tampered with the hardware.
Is there any free diagnostic software I can download to do the testing.
Thanks!

 

[AlHuneke]

I would try the vendor support downloads site. The laptops I've had came with diagnostic SW already installed. Seems to me it was a boot option to run it. Likely different for different machines. You'll need to do some Internet searches to find out if Toshiba offers this and how to activate it.

BTW--Running Win7 is pretty risky now as support ended in January unless you are on some special corporate extended support. From a security perspective, you really need to update to Win10. There are ways to do that for free (again, search on the internet) but you will have to reinstall all the programs you installed (make sure you run a full backup first and record your windows key--you can capture this with BelArc advisor.

 

[healer]

I went to Toshiba forum. it seems to me the forum is only for partners not for the general community. I downloaded the driver and it is not compatible when I try to install.

Could you please give me the keywords I'm searching for?

By the way I do have a Windows 10 system. I even have a XP system. I like to keep one each at this stage. And I do back up all the systems.