>>>>> Steinar Bang <s...@dod.no>: > Sometime (a day or so maybe) before <2024-06-26 Wed 19:59> the touchpad > stopped working on my Acer Aspire 5 with a MATE desktop on debian 12.5.
> At the time the laptop had gone 50 days since the last reboot so I > figured something had gone wrong during the time and a reboot would fix > it. > So in <2024-06-29 Sat 18:07> I did a reboot as a result of "apt > full-upgrade" to debian 12.5 and the touchpad still wasn't working. > I have been thinking that the cause may be > 1. A hardware failure? > 2. I accidentially pressed a keyboard combination that disables the > touchpad? > 3. I have accidentially made some configuration change that disables > the touchpad? The cause was number 2 and the key is F7 (without pressing the Fn key). Pressing F7 gave me the touchpad back. I decided to give this yet another try this morning and googled combinations of "acer aspire 5 fn key disable touchpad" I was told that Fn+F6 and Fn+F7 is supposed to toggle the touchpad on many Acer laptops. But pressing Fn+F6 or Fn+F7 had no more effect than anything else I had tried. But one thing I discovered was that many people have had the disappearing touchpad problem on Acer laptopns, also on Windows, and have tried everything around upgrading drivers and even upgrading from Windows 10 to Windows 11. So this is not a debian or GNU/linux specific issue. I am always reluctant to reboot but I decided I had to bite the bullet and boot into BIOS and see what I could find there. But I always, before doing anything, I do a quick google to see what I can find, search string "acer aspire touchpad bios", and there I found this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/AcerOfficial/comments/ug3xks/touchpad_not_working_at_all_for_my_aspire_5_tried/ Specifically this posting: https://www.reddit.com/r/AcerOfficial/comments/ug3xks/comment/l1iia93/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button So I tried F6 without Fn and the screen went black. One more press on F6 and I had the desktop back. Then I tried F7 without Fn... aaaand touchpad was back. I fully supports the rants in the posting linked to above. Couldn't said it better myself.
