When in doubt, "reset the BIOS"!

This is from personal experience.

I have a Sony VAIO laptop I've been using for about a month. It was quite reliable... Until one night. I closed the cover and put it in my bag. About an hour later I took it back out... It resumed... To a blue screen of death. Then it rebooted, and after that the trackpad no longer works. Device manager says it's not working. Deleted the device, and it's as if that device no longer exists... can't be detected any more. However, reboot, and it's there again. :P

I tried all sorts of things... Reloaded drivers (from the Sony "Download Taxi" support site, and the onboard recovery partition), deleted and uninstalled the device, then added it back... to system restore a couple different restore points. Nothing worked. The only thing I did NOT do is reset the BIOS.

What do I mean by reset the BIOS? On this model of Sony VAIO, you hit F2 a couple times as you boot up, and you'll get into the BIOS setup screen. Even though there's nothing here to set except boot order and date/time, do a "load default values" and "save and exit" may just cure your ills.

It did with mine, but I had to call two different Sony techs to get that solution. Doh! After that BIOS reset the trackpad is working again.

So... before you call in the big guns, try resetting the BIOS. It may save you a tech support call.