Touchpad Not Working on Windows 11
A dead touchpad is usually a toggle, a connected mouse, or a driver. Check the Windows 11 Touchpad page first, then restart properly and reinstall the driver.
A touchpad that stopped responding is far more often switched off than broken. Open Start > Settings > Bluetooth & devices > Touchpad, confirm the Touchpad toggle is on, and if any mouse is connected, check that Leave touchpad on when a mouse is connected is ticked. If both are already right, the next two moves are a genuine Restart and a driver reinstall in Device Manager, in that order.
Get to the Touchpad page, even with no pointer
On Windows 11 the page is Settings > Bluetooth & devices > Touchpad. On Windows 10 the same settings sit under Settings > Devices > Touchpad, which is why so many copied guides send Windows 11 owners hunting for a page that is not there. The fastest route is the deep link: press Windows key + R and run ms-settings:devices-touchpad.
With no working pointer at all, drive it from the keyboard. Dell documents the sequence: press Windows key + Q (or Windows key + S), type touchpad settings, use the arrow keys to highlight Touchpad settings, press Enter, then Tab until a box appears around the Touchpad toggle and press Spacebar.
| What you need | Keyboard-only route |
|---|---|
| The Touchpad settings page | Windows key + R, then ms-settings:devices-touchpad |
| The same page via search | Windows key + S, type touchpad settings, arrow keys, Enter |
| Flip a toggle once you are there | Tab until it is outlined, then Spacebar |
| Device Manager | Windows key + X, then the arrow keys |
| A pointer you can move | Settings > Accessibility > Mouse > Mouse keys, which needs a numeric keypad, so many 13- and 14-inch laptops cannot use it |
Two things on that page are worth reading first. If the words “Your PC has a precision touchpad” appear at the top, Windows is driving the hardware with its own built-in driver. Dell states the negative plainly: when that line is not listed, the machine does not have a Precision Touchpad, and its settings and fixes come from the vendor’s own driver instead. The other is the Reset button, which returns touchpad settings and gestures to their defaults in one step.
Match the symptom to the fix
| What you’re seeing | Most likely cause | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| No cursor at all, and never was | Turned off in Windows, or by the laptop’s own toggle | Turn the Touchpad toggle on; look for a small touchpad icon on the F-key row, and on some HP models try double-tapping the upper-left corner of the pad |
| Dies the moment a mouse connects or you dock | “Leave touchpad on when a mouse is connected” is unchecked | Tick it on the same Settings page |
| Broke after an update; the Touchpad page looks bare | Driver replaced, missing, or corrupted | Reinstall the driver in Device Manager, or use Roll Back Driver if an update caused it |
| Fine from a cold boot, dead after the lid was closed | Firmware or vendor driver bug on resume from sleep | Install vendor firmware and driver updates, including optional ones |
| Shutting down and powering on changes nothing | Fast startup restored the same broken driver state | Choose Restart from the Power menu instead |
| Moves, but slowly, or ignores taps | Cursor speed, sensitivity, or tap settings | Press Reset on the Touchpad settings page |
| Nothing works, even after a driver reinstall | Hardware, ribbon cable, or a BIOS setting | Run the maker’s hardware test and check the touchpad option in BIOS/UEFI setup |
There is no universal keyboard shortcut for the touchpad. ASUS puts it on F6 or F9 and says the hotkey may vary by model; Dell’s own enable and disable article lists no function-key shortcut at all; some HP touchpads toggle on a double-tap in the upper-left corner of the pad itself. Look for the icon on your own keyboard rather than guessing at a combination.
Restart, don’t shut down
This is the step people skip because they believe they already did it. Fast startup is on by default on any PC capable of hibernation, and Microsoft is explicit about what it does: shutting down puts the computer into a hibernation state instead of a full shutdown, so the next power-on loads the saved kernel and drivers back out of the hibernation file rather than enumerating devices and loading their drivers fresh. Microsoft also notes that this behavior does not occur when you restart.
That is why a touchpad wedged by stale driver state survives shut-down-and-power-on and is still dead at the login screen. Start > Power > Restart is the option that gives drivers a clean start. Try it before you touch Device Manager.
Reinstall or roll back the driver
Microsoft’s own fix for a non-working touchpad is driver-based: update through Windows Update first, and if that does not take, reinstall the device, because reinstalling forces the latest drivers to download from Windows Update. That depends on a driver actually being published there for your machine, so treat it as likely rather than guaranteed.
In Device Manager (right-click Start > Device Manager) the touchpad turns up under either Human Interface Devices or Mice and other pointing devices — which one depends on the machine, so expand both. On Dell laptops the entry to look for is HID-compliant touchpad. Right-click it, choose Uninstall device, and confirm with the Uninstall button. If you see a checkbox offering to remove the driver software, that appears only where a third-party driver package is installed. Then restart from Start > Shut down or sign out > Restart, and Windows attempts to reinstall the driver on its own.
If it broke the day a driver update landed, undo that instead: right-click the device > Properties > Driver tab > Roll Back Driver, pick a reason, confirm, and restart. It needs administrator permissions, and the button is unavailable when the previous driver is not stored on the system, so try it but do not build a plan around it. To update by hand, use Update driver and choose the option to search automatically for drivers. Our guide to a driver that will not install on Windows 11 covers what to do when that step itself fails.
Vendor touchpad and firmware fixes often arrive as optional updates, which Windows does not install by itself. They live at Start > Settings > Windows Update > Advanced options > Optional updates; select the drivers you want and choose Download and install. Choose deliberately rather than taking everything, for the reasons in whether to install Windows updates right away.
When it is the bus, the firmware, or the BIOS
Laptop touchpads connect over I2C, SPI or USB, and on most modern machines it is not USB — so the bus driver underneath matters as much as the touchpad driver. On Intel machines, ASUS points at Device Manager > System devices > Intel(R) Serial IO I2C Host Controller: right-click it and select Enable device, and if that is not enough, uninstall it and restart so Windows reinstalls it. Dell separately lists updating the BIOS and the Intel Serial I/O driver as a touchpad fix. AMD and Qualcomm laptops have a differently named controller, so read down the category rather than searching for that exact string.
A touchpad that works from a cold boot and dies after sleep is usually firmware rather than a Windows setting, and vendor updates really do fix it. Microsoft shipped exactly that on January 15, 2026 for the Surface Laptop 7th Edition — Surface Driver Update 128.1.41.0, fixing an issue where the touchpad stopped working and the device needed a restart after resuming from sleep. That is one model, not a general Windows behavior, but it is the shape of the problem: install every firmware and driver update your maker offers before concluding the hardware failed.
The touchpad can also be switched off in BIOS/UEFI setup, and some setups carry their own auto-disable-when-a-mouse-is-attached option that overrides Windows. Enter setup with the key shown on your PC’s startup screen (ASUS and Dell document F2; other makers use F10, F1, Esc or Del), re-enable the internal pointing device or load setup defaults, and update the BIOS while you are there. To settle whether the pad itself has failed, run the maker’s hardware test: Dell SupportAssist or the built-in diagnostics reached by tapping F12 at startup, HP PC Hardware Diagnostics, or MyASUS > Device Settings > Input Device Settings, where the Touchpad option must be set to Unlock.
Steps that are not worth your time
Skip the widely copied instruction to open the HID-compliant touchpad’s Properties and untick “Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power” — Microsoft documents that Power Management tab on the parent device node rather than the touchpad, and on the I2C and SPI touchpads most laptops use it is frequently absent altogether. Windows keeps its troubleshooters at Settings > System > Troubleshoot > Other troubleshooters, but no Microsoft page documents a touchpad entry there, so do not go hunting for one. Nothing in Microsoft’s or any vendor’s touchpad documentation points to system file scans, registry edits, or restarting a service as the cure, and third-party driver-updater utilities are not the answer either.
It is also probably not a live Windows bug. As of September 3, 2026, Windows release health lists no open touchpad known issue for version 24H2, 25H2 or 26H1. There is a touchpad reliability improvement in KB5120996, released August 27, 2026, but that update is for Windows 11 version 26H1 only, and 26H1 ships preinstalled on select new devices rather than being offered as an in-place update from 24H2 or 25H2. If your PC did not arrive with it, that fix is not the thing you are missing.
Work down in that order — toggle, mouse setting, Restart, driver, firmware, BIOS, hardware test — and stop at the step that fixes it. Wipe the pad with a dry cloth on the way past, since a greasy or damp surface genuinely confuses it. If a driver reinstall and the maker’s own diagnostic both come back clean and the pad still does nothing, a loose internal ribbon cable or a failed module is what is left, and that is a service visit rather than a setting. The same order of checks applies when a second monitor is not detected on Windows 11.