Gateway laptop touchpad

[GA]

Hello , I unable to use my touchpad and am looking for someone to tell enable it after I think someone who used the laptop pressed some keys and disabled it. They cant remember what they touched. Great....Gateway Laptop Model MA7 . vista

[Carbon Dudeoxide]

Try this.

Go to Start --> Control Panel.
Click on either the Mouse Icon, go to Printers --> Other Hardware and click the Mouse icon.
In the Mouse Properties window, click on the Device Settings tab.
Click on your touchpad, and click on Enable or Disable.

[GA]

Thanks for the reply: I have the following headings -button,s pointer, pointer options, wheel & hardware.  Cannot see device settings.

[Carbon Dudeoxide]

No Device Settings?

If you go to Device Manager, are there any Yellow Question or Exclamation marks?

[GA]

No yellow , but there is a blue question mark at the top of the page..

[Carbon Dudeoxide]

Hold on a sec, this is Windows Vista?

[GA]

Yes Windows Vista

[Carbon Dudeoxide]

Ok.

At the bottom right, where the clock is, look for the icon for your mouse. Not sure what you're may be, but mine is 'Synaptics Pointing Device'.
Have a look through its options and see if you can disable it.

You may also want to ask the person who was using it what he did.

Does your laptop not have any buttons to disable the touchpad?

[GA]

Okay , I have gone into control panel and gone into "change settings" . Clicked on "disable device" which is a HID Compliant mouse, that must be what I am using now, and ended up not being able to use the pointer at all. The touch pad did not work when I disabled the mouse. There is no mouse icon near the clock on this laptop.
The six year old , (yes six) who touched the computer cannot remember what keys he touched ob the computer. 

[Carbon Dudeoxide]

Hmmm....that may be a problem....

Try, whilst holding down the FN key, tapping all the function button. For example, FN + F1.
There may be a function button to disable the touchpad. Once pressed, it should enable it again.

[GA]

Ive tried all that . I,m quite sure that he touched a key or a number of keys yet as much as I try I cant work it out. Maybe I should give the computer back to him. When I contacted Gateway the recommend that I send them the computer, which would lose everything on the hard drive. Was not impressed with that solution.
Thanks for your time anyway.

[august]

I know this thread fizzled out more than two years ago, but I want to thank thank thank the expert who posted the assistance.  I have a 6-month-old daughter who loves to punch keys and she somehow disabled the touchpad.  This post gave me the lead to solve the problem:  hit Fn+F6.  That toggles the "disable touchpad" function. 

This has been driving me crazy for more than a week, and I haven't been able to find the solution anywhere, including the Gateway user's manuals, google searches, nothing. 

So, thanks, friend. 

[soybean]

Thanks. Glad to hear from someone who benefited from the discussion here.