The other day my little brother and his friend were pushing some buttons on my laptop and today when I went to use it I discovered that the mouse won't work. You can't click, scroll, or move the mouse in any way. It is reallly important that I fix this. Also I cannot access the toolbar because it "dissappears" when the mouse is not on it. Please help.

Hmmm. No mouse. That makes clicking tough.

Get to START | RUN (<ALT><S> will open up the START menu if all other windows are closed. <Ctrl><ESC> will also open it uncer certain circumstances. Enter "DEVMGMT.MSC", tab to the OK key and hit <ENTER>. The "Device Manager" will open.

Use <ALT><TAB> to move to that window. Arrow down (or hit "M") to "Mice and other pointing devices" and open the tree using the "+" sign on the keypad (not on the top row of the keyboard). Arrow down to your mouse and type <ALT><A>. The ACTION menu should open. Arrow down to "Uninstall" and hit <ENTER>. If you have more than one mouse device (say a mouse pad and a real mouse), do this for both mice.

Reboot the computer. The mouse should be detected and the driver should be installed and initialized.

If that doesn't work, let us know.

Many laptops have a disable option to disable the touchpad

-check control panel for mouse/keyboard options to see if setting there

Some laptops also have a physical button you can push to disable/enable the touchpad - Look exactly above the touchpad for a small button (sometimes not even noticeable)

If these don't help out, what model laptop are you using?