There seems to have been an earlier problem where psmouse loading prior to synaptics would prevent synaptics from loading:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1035407
A temporary workaround was to blacklist psmouse and load the module after boot from rc.local
I checked the loaded modules and it does look like synaptics is not loading, so maybe this issue has been around for awhile.
There seems to have been an earlier problem where psmouse loading prior to synaptics would prevent synaptics from loading:
http:// ubuntuforums. org/showthread. php?t=1035407
A temporary workaround was to blacklist psmouse and load the module after boot from rc.local
I checked the loaded modules and it does look like synaptics is not loading, so maybe this issue has been around for awhile.