Multi-touch trackpad gestures not working (Macbook pro 15" unibody)

Those are about as detailed as the instructions get. I'm new to Macs too and there is enough information there that I was able to get the job done.

The only other piece I can offer is substitute where he mentions the Apple key with the Command key. That took me a couple of seconds to figure out. The older Macs had a picture of an Apple on the key, now it's the other image and says Command.

I hope that helps somewhat.

Well I can assure you Im not one of those people who don't own a mac and "beat up" an issue.

Just started having this problem, so I'm happy to see that there's a solution. Question, though: When I tried this step:

3. Locate the one with the UUID in it (the UUID will look something like this: 6F77B0D6-8208-4977-8B45-EB1ADF6714BA)....

I noticed that it actually showed me 3 plist files with this UUID-looking string. How do I know which to delete? Should I delete all three of them??

I think there should only be one file that starts with ".GlobalPreferences" in the "~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/" directory. Please check the prefix.

Well, when I type rm ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/.GlobalPreferences into my Terminal, and press Tab to get the list, I get three files listed, all starting with .GlobalPreferences followed by numbers in the same format shown in the instructions. They're all different strings, but they all look the same, if you know what I mean.

Yup, three. What up?

I guess you created additional users in the past and shared your home directory so multiple files got created. I would do a "ls -al Library/Preferences/ByHost/" and look at the time stamps, then MOVE the most recently updated one to a temporary location and see if that fixes it. If not, you can move the file back.

Hi Robert. Hmm, I don't recall ever sharing my home directory... I may have created another user in the past only briefly to perhaps test something, and then deleted that user. And right now, and for a long time, I'm the only user. So, not sure what's going on with that.

To be honest, I am not totally comfortable in the Terminal beyond following simple instructions, like those mentioned to fix this problem. Not sure how to move stuff around (using the Terminal), like you suggested....

May I ask: what would the harm be in simply deleting all three of those .plist files? Will not the one that needs to do so regenerate itself anyway?

There maybe no harm deleting them all, but to be safe you can just move them. Here's how you would do it:

mv ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/.GlobalPreferences* ~/

This will put them in your top-level home directory. If this fixes your problem and causes no issues, then you are in good shape. If there are issues you can move them back with this:

mv ~/.GlobalPreferences* ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/

Robert

Great! Thanks for the instructions!

In the meantime, I reset PRAM, and so far have not experienced the problem again, but if I do, I'll follow those directions you gave me and see if that does anything.

Thanks again.

Same here. tried everything mentioned in the posts, but after some time the trackpad goes mad again. It's just impossible to work with the macbook unless you plug in a usb mouse and turn off the trackpad... what a pain...

Hi, I just found myself having the same problem and I read the very first page and tried the "fsck _hfs -f /dev/disk0s2" approach with little results. I started reading and found something that said something like "to see directories(or something like that)" and then it said /sbin/fsck -fy. I wrote that and then it started doing a whole bunch of things (One of them being mentioning a dev/rdisk0s2 maybe I mistyped the above instructions) and then it told me macintoch HD seems ok. so I did the shutdown -r now segment of the instructions and now I have a trackpad.

To sum up.

First I tried this:
fsck _hfs -f /dev/disk0s2

It did not work. It said BAD SUPERBLOCK: MAGIC NUMBER WRONG USE ALTERNATE SUPERBLOCK

Then I tried

/sbin/fsck -fy and
It ran a few checks and said MACINTOCH HD seems ok

Then I ran

shutdown -r now

It restarted and everything is working.

I should mention I have no idea what I this does. Only that it worked for me.

-Cheers