Jtdcftul

My Synaptic Touchpad stopped working in the past few weeks.

The touchscreen and external mouse still work so I've been using them to work around it.

The symptoms are:

• Touchpad works on login screen


• Touchpad stops working after login screen


• All other inputs work, including keyboard, touchscreen, external mouse, docking station, etc.


• Doesn't work on Wayland, either.


• F7 key comes up with a square with an X in the bottom-right corner, but the X won't go away no matter how many times I press it.


• 
  sudo rmmod usbhid; sudo modprobe usbhid enables the touchpad for a split second.

For the previous few weeks, I've been able to resurrect the touchpad with sudo rmmod usbhid; sudo modprobe usbhid so I suspect that this issue is in two parts.

xinput list shows:

 Virtual core pointer                       id=2    [master pointer  (3)]

⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer                id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]

⎜   ↳ SYNA7500:00 06CB:780B                     id=16   [slave  pointer  (2)]

⎜   ↳ Synaptics T Pad V 01.31 Touchpad          id=11   [slave  pointer  (2)]

⎣ Virtual core keyboard                     id=3    [master keyboard (2)]

    ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard               id=5    [slave  keyboard (3)]

    ↳ Video Bus                                 id=6    [slave  keyboard (3)]

    ↳ Power Button                              id=7    [slave  keyboard (3)]

    ↳ Integrated_Webcam_FHD: Integrat           id=12   [slave  keyboard (3)]

    ↳ Integrated_Webcam_8M: Rear Inte           id=13   [slave  keyboard (3)]

    ↳ Intel Virtual Button driver               id=14   [slave  keyboard (3)]

    ↳ SYNA7500:00 06CB:780B Pen                 id=15   [slave  keyboard (3)]

    ↳ Dell WMI hotkeys                          id=17   [slave  keyboard (3)]

    ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard              id=18   [slave  keyboard (3)]

    ↳ Synaptics T Pad V 01.31 Consumer Control  id=8    [slave  keyboard (3)]

    ↳ Synaptics T Pad V 01.31                   id=9    [slave  keyboard (3)]

    ↳ Synaptics T Pad V 01.31 Wireless Radio Control    id=10   [slave  keyboard (3)]

I have tried:

1. Installing the synaptics driver


2. Adding in a libinput filter (which made the Synaptics T Pad V 01.31 Touchpad above disappear, but actually made it worse)


3. `xinput set-prop 11 "Device Enabled" 1 (0 followed by 1 as well)


4. `xinput set-prop 16 "Device Enabled" 1 (0 followed by 1 as well)

This is on kernel 4.18.0-15-generic, but I have also tried going back to 4.17 and it doesn't work, either. I can't roll back to any earlier versions of xserver-xorg-input-* because they don't appear to be available.

I suspect that the touchpad may be programattically disabled (which would explain the X in the F7 status) but I don't know how to programatically re-enable it.

How do I get my touchpad back?

According to the Ubuntu help docs, this problem is often solved using the following command:

gconftool-2 --set --type boolean /desktop/gnome/peripherals/touchpad/touchpad_enabled true

According to this other question, you can enable or toggle the device using the xinput command.

To enable:

xinput set-prop 11 "Device Enabled" 1

To toggle:

xinput set-prop 11 "Device Enabled" 0 

xinput set-prop 11 "Device Enabled" 1

You can also enable or toggle the touchpad using synclient instead of xinput.

To enable:

synclient touchpadoff=0

To toggle:

synclient touchpadoff=1

synclient touchpadoff=0

Additionally, you could try using a different device listed like device 16 instead of 11:

xinput set-prop 16 "Device Enabled" 1

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