If your touchpad or mouse stop working after windows update of IdeaCom Technology Inc. – Input – IdeaCom HID Touch Screen (PS/2) update, then your not alone. I have Vista Business 64 bits and I have seen reports on the net that the problem occurred to XP and 32 bits versions. My hardware is a
Dell Notebook XPS 1330. However this is applicable to other laptops and computers that have the same problem (that is trusting Microsoft).

To solve it you need to uninstall it, however you can’t do it from the Remove Software, it has to be done from the device Manager. Go to the device manager and look for the IdeaCom HID Touch Screen (PS/2) in either Human Interface Devices or in Mice or other pointing devices as shown bellow:

(I apologize for not having screen shots from when I have the problems, I just forgot.)

Once you have found the IdeaCom device, right click on it and Click on Device Uninstall. Your will get a confirmation windows, there check on the option Delete the driver software for this device.

If you also find the Dell Touchpad,  uninstall it and delete the drivers as you did with the IdeaCom. The reason is because we want to have no conflicts and windows loading drivers that “compete”. In my case this happened because I tried to Install the Synaptic drivers for the Dell Touch Pad (that I download from support page). If didn’t reinstall the drivers, I don’t know if you have that will be your case. However to be sure double check and uninstall the all IdeaCom and Dell Touchpad devices.

You may have to reboot after each uninstall of devices (in the case of being more than one) instead of doing both at the same time. Remember ONLY to uninstall the touch pad drivers and IdeaCom, forget about the other USB Human Interface Devices.

Download the drivers for the Touchpad (in my case if was from Dell). If you have another laptop or computer then download the corresponding drivers and Install, then reboot. Everything should work after this.

There is another approach to look for the driver file in the C:\WINDWOS\system32\drivers\ folder and delete it. I don’t like and recommend this approach because windows doesn’t know the device is not on the system, it just messing. Although Windows has it problems, it will have less if it’s well inform. Think about it with your Linux distro, it’s better to use the package manager to install programs, instead of download the sources and compiling. In the case you do an update it the package manager will update the dependencies. However if it doesn’t know the program is installed, then it will not update the dependencies. Or vice versa, other programs may depend on it and not get the corresponding update.

Finally, to avoid future problems DON’T download device drivers from Microsoft. Its better to download them from the manufacturer. Although they should be generic, manufactures sometimes tweak them or test them better than Microsoft.