Dell TouchPad suddenly stopped working

I went out of town the other day, which means something is going to go wrong in my house that I'll have to fix when I get back.

This time it was the touchpad on my wife's Dell Inspiron N5030 stopped working suddenly. The backstory is that she and my daughter were trying to find some funny kid videos on the internet when it suddenly stopped.

I hooked up a mouse and it worked just fine, but sure enough, the touchpad was completely dead. I suspected a hardware failure until I googled "Dell touchpad not working." In no time, I found the problem listed along with the solution on this link:

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/kcs/document?docid=424135

Luckily, it was just the touchpad enable/disable key which is located just to the right of the F12 key. It allows you to toggle the touchpad on/off. A very useful key for those who inadvertently hit the touchpad when typing text.