I am using a Toshiba S855-S5378 running windows 8 with Synaptics touchpad driver. When this happens, the touchpad driver did not start up when it's supposed to. I also can't open the mouse settings in control panel. The startup entry of the touchpad driver is still there. The only thing I can do right now is to uninstall the touchpad driver, remove all it's files, and reinstall it again. Then it works as normal until it goes unresponsive again next time. There are no warnings or whatnot.
This seems to happen randomly. Sometimes I have a week before the problem came back. Sometimes I can go for a couple of months with no problems, only to have it haunt me again.
I tried several tests and I can't seem to find the problem. These are not the cause of the problem: Windows update, Slimdrivers updates, Filehippo updater, CCleaner Scan, Virus Scan, Glary Utilities Scan, Installing/uninstalling programs from add/remove programs.