Home Forums Mac Software Mac Operating Systems Mouse and Touchpad not responding

I mentioned this intermittent problem briefly in another string and thought it had to do with Twitter emails or 'pings' which I see through LS, but now I am completely frozen out except for the keyboard. Trying resetting PRAM, tried booting from Apple Recovery, but they still do not work and cannot run Apple Recovery when they don't work. Any ideas here?

Are all the input devices wireless? If so…

• are they showing up in System Preferences > Bluetooth as connected or disconnected?
• if they are connected, what battery level are they indicating (if that appears in OS X 10.7)?
• have you tried un-pairing (deleting) and re-pairing each of the Bluetooth devices?
• are there any other active or inactive bluetooth pairings showing in Systems Preferences > Bluetooth?
• do you have any non-Apple USB, Bluetooth, or other RF devices, drivers or kernel extensions installed on your computer?
• do you have any other bluetooth devices on your computer?
• do you have any other computers, iPhones, iPads, or other devices with Bluetooth turned on within 30 feet of your computer?
• …and the old standby, does this occur in a test account on your system or only on your regular logon account?

It's the mouse AND the trackpad. Can't check anything.

Command-Tab your way to the Finder.
Shift-Command-A for Applications.
S and then down arrow as needed to get to System Preferences.
Command-O (letter O) to open System Preferences.
B to see a list of possible searches.
Down arrow to get to Bluetooth.
Return to open the Bluetooth prefpane.

Ok, got to Bluetooth and says my mouse is connected. It moves around, as does the trackpad, just not clickable. I tried a different startup disk, same problem, and did get to my AHT disk which did not find anything.

The mouse and trackpad are clickable for about 10 seconds after startup and are then UNCLICKABLE. I wasn't clear about that. The cursor moves.

Uh, I had an old wired mouse attached to a USB port because my Magic Mouse kept disconnecting and someone here suggest that and it worked for a very long time, until today, actually. When I saw it and unplugged it, the trackpad and Magic Mouse became clickable again. What the deuce?

Bluetooth appears to the system as a USB hub. If you will open System Information and click on Hardware > USB you will find a USB bus listed with a hub and under that another hub labeled IR Receiver and under that another hub labeled Bluetooth USB Host Controller.

Must have something to do with why connecting an old external mouse kept the Bluetooth one from becoming disconnected for no apparent reason. Don't know why all of a sudden this set up became an issue. Nothing changed...

...except I had back surgery and it was very difficult to get to my AHT DVD. How does it know? The wireless card stopped working right after the surgery, too, remember?