I disabled the touch pad with the mouse control in system-preferences, this also disabled the regular on board mouse buttons. Fortunately if I plug a mouse in it puts every thing in working order but only until I do a restart. The control stick works no matter what, I don't know the config file to set everything back to working. The touch pad tab is now gone from the mouse control in preferences. I am running Intrepid.
[SOLVED] Enable touchpad Inspiron 4100
Archived thread 1000594 from Hardware. Markdown source: Hardware/thread_1000594_[SOLVED]_Enable_touchpad_Inspiron_4100.md
I found no workable answer for this problem, so having nothing on this laptop other then a now borked system I just am doing a reinstall.