THE CAT FROZE THE MOUSE!
Those of you who own a cat will understand only too well the perils that these four-legged fur-balls can put one through if you allow them access of any kind to your electrics, television remote or laptop computer!
Our Little Mascot, Mishka (TE-Zine’s ‘editor in chief!) takes it upon herself to sit on the laptop keyboard at any and every opportunity. It 
cannot even be moved from one room to another without her meowing ‘all aboard!’ and taking a flying leap for a free ride!
Not only has she frozen the ACER eMachine on many an occasion, but has now also figured out which button to press in order to turn it on and watch all the pretty lights flash before her. Our previous neighbours cat had a similar passion for an older laptop; he was always trying to type, would recline over hands and keyboard whilst anyone was trying to type and the last time he was scooted away, he stole the letter L! We never got it back!
Scarily, Little Mishka once, somehow, entered the correct password to access our system and before we could say ‘SCOOT!‘, she had crashed it completely!
Yesterday she went one step further and froze the mouse touchpad; We couldn’t get that little cursor to budge from the middle of the screen no matter what we did. The frustration!!! (So much for these creatures being familiars! 😉 She was being anything but helpful this evening!)
Two hours later, having refreshed, shut down, restarted, removed and re-inserted the battery, re-installed mouse drivers, hit fn-f7, as one is supposedly supposed to do with ACER machines, done a restart in SAFE mode and done a complete system recovery, we sat in dire desperation, resigned to the fact that we would have to wait until morning and call the tech guru‘s at Dick Smith. We had a deadline to meet and we were cranky – very cranky.
In desperation we borrowed a mate’s computer–and office! (thankyou, by the way!!!) and after learning how to access the laptop via keyboard control only, courtesy of someone’s blog (forgive me, we cannot remember whom and thus give credits!) We searched on google for a solution to the mouse freeze predicament. As we all know, when it comes to finding what you are looking for in any search engine, the precise wording of your search is critical. We entered every search term I could think of which may be relevant;
Frozen Mouse
Mouse freeze
How to fix jammed cursor?
Fix frozen cursor?
Lost mouse control how fix?
My mouse is stuck
How do I fix a frozen mouse pointer?
The arrow won’t move
The pointer is stuck
Unfreeze Mouse pointer
Mouse solution
Mouse drivers
We tried every solution we came across. NONE of them worked. It was now after midnight and no dispositions were improving.
Amidst the solutions given, we stumbled across a gamer forum chat in which someone was complaining that they could not DISABLE their mouse. (It is incredible how many online gamers are also tech freaks–VERY USEFUL PEOPLE–we love them here at Tezi mag!!)
‘Aha!’ we thought, ‘If there’s a solution here to disable it, then ought not we be able to reverse the process to ENABLE it? We read… and read… and read… it did rather go on–but to no avail… EXCEPT that he referred to his mouse as a Mouse PAD.
So again we pulled up google, this time searching;
Enable/disable mouse PAD
It presented a page of varying, but hopeful solutions, most a repetition of that which had gone before, with slight variances, all of which we tried and again, none of which worked. Disheartened, we sat staring blankly at the list of futile solutions before our eye fell upon one which referred to the built-in mouse pad, not as a ’mouse pad’, but as a ‘TOUCHPAD‘.
Having all but given up we googled once more with a heavy sigh;
Enable mouse touchpad cursor.
Voila!
‘Gamergirl’ on www.techsupportforum.com came to the rescue!
Oscar 1 had encountered the same problem – WITH a suspected same four-legged fur-ball cause! It was such sublime symmetry and the answer, so embarrassingly simple! What is more, IT WORKED!
MOUSE POINTER FREEZE SOLUTION for an ACER eMachine:
To the left and right of the main power button there are two buttons. If the left button is orange, your mouse touchpad is disabled. Press it to enable mouse touch pad. Problem solved.
As is so often the case, the solutions to the scariest issues are usually the simplest!
We are still blushing, but so relieved that we truly don‘t care!
Full credits and very great thanks to GAMERGIRL, with a return link to her solution and the website responsible, www.techsupportforums.com .
Many thanks!
Tezi Magazine!
OMG – (And I am not prone to such flippant acronymage) — that was the problem with my computer! I have been cracking my brain — running malware updates all through keyboard navigation for hours — and voila! — the little button near the keyboard fixed it. Thank you so kindly..
Haha! You’re so welcome. I couldn’t believe it was so simple either. Drove me stark raving mad that one!
What botton cuz this same problem is driving me crazy and I need this to do my school work
To the left and right of the main power button (the button you press to start your computer) there are two buttons. The left button controls your mouse pad. It works as an on/off toggle switch. If the orange light is glowing on this button, your mouse touchpad is disabled. Press this button to re-enable the use of your mouse touch pad. The light will go off and your mouse should work again. Hope that helps Mensiah!
That really helped me thanks! My trouble maker was a baby nephew…
Haha! No worries. 🙂