Last week Windows Update informed me of a few pending updates, so I downloaded them. But instead of restarting my computer, I kept postponing it for a few days. Then one day, out of necessity (internet wasn't working so I decided to restart in order to refresh my IP address) I restarted my computer. After logging in, the desktop and taskbar took forever to load. And when they eventually did, they were practically "read-only" (not in the actual sense of the word, I just mean that it was like they were just a photo, not actually there). If I clicked on any of the icons everything would freeze. So I restarted and decided to use safe mode, which was perfectly fine and operational. When I got home, I booted the computer normally and after logging in I left it and went to eat. Half an hour later, I came back to see that the Synaptics (TouchPad) driver had crashed, and Windows gave me the option of reporting the problem or closing it- I closed it. After that everything was completely normal, with the exception of the scroll feature, which was absent. The next day, upon restarting, the same thing happened. It's not normal for me to have to leave my computer for half an hour after booting for it to be operational.

I heard that you guys are great with obscure issues and run your own set of tests and what not which would be great in my case because I don't have a clue what the issue is, whether it's related to the driver, Windows Update or otherwise.

Oh and in an effort to fix the problem (operating under the assumption that it is caused by the driver crashing) I decided to update/reinstall it. The HP website said I should uninstall the current driver first, so I did. However, upon installation of the driver (the same one, the latest one and every other version out there) the installation would crash and inform me that it has failed due to some sort of error. Now I am without a trackpad, so I started using an external mouse, but I'm still using safe mode.