Gsynaptic touchpad not working

Apologies for both if this is in the wrong place or if this particular issue has already come up but I've searched the forums and have not found the particular solution I need.

I have an Acer Aspire One 8.5" running Linux Linpus. Up until a few months everything was working fine. I'd done the usual hacks and it was all fine. However, recently the touchpad stopped working. The only solutions I can ever seem to find give Windows solutions (obviously no good) or assume that you've accidentally switched it off with the Fn + F7 routine, which is not that case here. I've tried switching and nothing. I have to rely on my USB mouse which isn't brilliant for a) certain surfaces/situations and b) battery life.

A while ago I needed the Acer Recovery CD so I already had the USB stick ready to go. I tried using this and all I got was a system where the touchpad still didn't work but now I had to spend hours getting it back to how I had it.

When I try loading loading Gsynaptics it gives me the problem:

I tried some solutions I found online and just ended up breaking the system - out with the Acer Recovery USB again...

So, in summary:
- The problem is not that the touchpad has been disabled with Fn+F7
- The Recovery USB does not fix the problem
- Edits to Gsynaptics doesn't appear to work

So, I'm still in the same boat. Any ideas? I'm stumped. It seems to me that the Recovery USB doesn't actually do a completely fresh reinstall of Linpus, but just kind of overwrite core files or something, but not everything. Is there a way to do this?