Synaptics Touchpad doesn't work on my HP nc6220

[lotus49]

I am running 10.4.5 on my HP nc6200 laptop. I have a very usable installation with video working (using a home made dongle to pretend to be an external monitor) and using a USB wireless adapter and bluetooth dongle (mainly for my Mac wireless mouse).

 

Unfortunately the Synaptics Trackpad doesn't do any thing although the driver appears to load OK. dmesg says:

 

ApplePS2Trackpad: Synaptics TouchPad v6.2

 

and there is a Trackpad tab under Keyboard & Mouse in System Prefences, but it doesn't appear to have any effect.

 

I know most Synaptics Trackpads work out of the box. I also know some users have found their Trackpad started to work if they disabled USB, but this is not an option for me, mainly because I then won't have network access (and what use is a computer with no network access).

 

Any ideas where to start looking or suggestions for possible solutions?

 

TIA