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!
My Little Mishka (TE-Zine’s ‘editor in chief!) takes it upon herself to sit on my laptop keyboard at any and every opportunity. I 
cannot even move it from one room to another without her meowing ‘all aboard!’ and taking a flying leap for a free ride!
Not only has she frozen my ACER eMachine on many occasions, 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. My previous neighbours cat had a similar passion for my older laptop; she was always trying to type, would recline over my hands and keyboard whilst I was trying to type and the last time I scooted him away, he stole my letter L! I never got it back!
Scarily, Little Mishka once, somehow, entered the correct password to access my system and before I could say ‘SCOOT!‘, she had crashed it completely!
Yesterday she went one step further and froze my mouse touchpad; I couldn’t get that little cursor to budge from the middle of the screen no matter what I 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, I sat in dire desperation, resigned to the fact that I would have to wait until morning and call my tech guru‘s at Dick Smith. I was cranky – very cranky.
In desperation I borrowed a mate’s computer (thankyou, by the way!!!) and after learning how to access my laptop via keyboard control only, courtesy of someone’s blog (forgive me, I cannot remember whom and thus give credits!) I searched on google for a solution to my 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. I 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
I tried every solution I came across. NONE of them worked. It was now after midnight and my disposition was not improving.
Amidst the solutions given, I 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!!)
‘Aha!’, I thought. ‘If there’s a solution here to disable it, then ought not I be able to reverse the process to ENABLE it? I 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 I pulled up google, this time searching;
Enable/disable mouse PAD
It presented me with a page of varying, but hopeful solutions, most a repetition of that which had gone before, with slight variances, all I which I tried and again, none of which worked. Disheartened, I sat staring blankly at the list of futile solutions before my 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 I 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!
I am still blushing, but so relieved that I truly I 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!
Tahala.
Feb 03, 2012 @ 17:00:41
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..
Mar 26, 2012 @ 14:27:12
Haha! You’re so welcome. I couldn’t believe it was so simple either. Drove me stark raving mad that one!
Jul 04, 2012 @ 22:57:22
What botton cuz this same problem is driving me crazy and I need this to do my school work
Aug 10, 2012 @ 13:56:37
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!
Dec 06, 2012 @ 22:40:17
That really helped me thanks! My trouble maker was a baby nephew…
Dec 10, 2012 @ 13:43:25
Haha! No worries.