Sunday, January 18, 2009

Aspire One's Synaptics Trackpad Suspend Issue in Intrepid

I just corrected a really strange and infuriating issue with the trackpad on my Acer Aspire One running Ubuntu Intrepid. I'm going to write the whole story in case someone finds it useful, but here is the short version: trackpad quit working and didn't come back with a reboot. The solution was to hit Fn+F7 a couple of times (didn't work on first press, but did after a few presses...).

Now for the long version:

My fancy new Aspire One went to sleep (suspend) on accident--I know there are some unresolved issues with devices after suspending, so I've tried to avoid it--and I couldn't make it wake up, so I did a hard reset by holding the power button down for ~5 seconds. However, upon reboot, I was horrified to find that my trackpad no longer worked. It still showed up in the hardware profiler and in the kernel boot log, but it was totally unresponsive. No cursor movement, no clicks, no nothing. I rebooted. Still nothing!

I scoured the intarwebs looking for a software solution, including purging/reinstalling the xorg drivers, reloading modules, etc. to no avail. However, I did find a forum post where another Acer user had reported a nonfunctional trackpad that followed him across several Live CDs, suggesting a hardware issue. I was horrified by this prospect, as I love my little machine and I've finally gotten it configured to my satisfaction. Luckily, this user was kind enough to post his deceivingly simple solution: re-enable the trackpad using a key combination of Fn+F7.

I don't remember ever pressing this key combo to disable it in the first place, so I'm forced to assume that it happened on its own. Now I know how to fix it, should it happen again.
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6 comments:

  1. AnonymousJanuary 25, 2009 at 3:36 PM

    Thanks for this. I've just had the same experience, and thanks to your post I'm a happy camper again!

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  2. Hunter K.January 25, 2009 at 3:43 PM

    @Grateful
    Hey man, glad I could help. I still can't figure out why it suspended/froze in the first place, but I'll make a new post if I ever do (it's happened to me again since the first time, so I suspect it will be an ongoing issue).

    I have a suspicion that it's related to failed file transfers triggering a bad cifs process that eventually brings down the system, but I can't be sure yet...

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  3. AnonymousMarch 13, 2009 at 9:07 PM

    Thank you, thank you. Fn F7 on the Acer Aspire One locks the trackpad! So when you hit Fn F7 again, the trackpad is unlocked. I must have hit by accident, and I've just spent an hour on the AA1 trying to solve, then came in to my desktop to Google a solution. Thank you thank you for posting this and saving my sanity!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousJuly 27, 2009 at 9:45 PM

    THANK YOU, THANK YOU !!! My God I would never of thought of that, I was camping and to save BAT. power I must have hit F7 by mistake< I tried everything I knew as far as, Restore,Terminal,SpinRite, and what do you know GOOGLE finds the awnser, you saved my sanity. Thank You

    Rigar

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  5. AnonymousAugust 12, 2009 at 3:04 PM

    Dude, you are my hero!

    I know this is a case of RTFM but I find out how to fix it here (fn+F7, D'oh!)

    ReplyDelete
  6. shamersMarch 30, 2011 at 9:04 PM

    thank you thank you thank you! two years later and you saved me, too!

    ReplyDelete