Hi all,

I have kind of a weird problem I'm hoping someone can help me with.

I have a user who has a Sony Vaio VGN-S360 laptop:

1.7 GHz Pentium
512MB RAM
Win XP Home SP2

His hard drive crashed a while back. After installing a new disk he 
discovered that he had misplaced the Sony Restore disks.

So he used a set of Dell Restore disks instead ( I know).

He was able to get everything working again except the touchpad. After some 
unseuccessful effort to fix the problem, he gave up and bought a new laptop.

So, now I'm trying to get the Sony fully functional again. I found a Sony 
Restore DVD on the Web, bought it and ran it on the Sony. Seemed to restore 
everything to factory except, you guessed it, the touchpad.

The Device Manager reports that it sees the touchpad, but returns a Code 
24 - 'This device is not present, is not working properly, or does not have 
all its drivers installed' under device status. I have tried restoring the 
Sony using both the Sony Restore DVD and doing a straight new XP Pro 
install. Code 24 is indicated regardless whether I use the Sony DVD or just 
install XP Pro alone from a bootable XP disk. The different result between 
the two installs as far as the touchpad goes is what the it is reported as 
under Device Manager.

Under XP Pro shows it as a PS/2 compatible mouse and installs whatever 
generic PS/2 driver comes with XP.

After the Sony restore DVD finishes up, Device Manager reports it as an ALPS 
Wide Pointing Device for Vaio and it is installed with Apoint drivers in the 
Program Files\Apoint directory .

Under both installs, I have forced a device uninstall and re-booted. Windows 
redetects the presence of the touchpad and attempts to re-install the 
hardware. Re-installation fails under both versions of Windows, Sony 
Recovered XP Home and straight XP Pro. Both indicate a Code 24 again in the 
Device Manager.

Under both OS installs, I have also dowloaded and installed the latest 
touchpad device driver and utility from Sony. Still get a Code 24.

So, I'm at a loss except to believe that there is something physically wrong 
with the touchpad hardware. The user says that the touchpad worked fine 
prior to the hard drive crash, but I can think of nothing else it could be.

If anyone has ever seen this sort of thing before and has a fix, I'd be very 
grateful.

Thanks in advance for any advice,

Garrett