Touchpad/curser Problem

Toshiba Satellite c55 laptop Windows 8.1. I have owned this laptop for about 1 1/2 years and from time to time have experienced the curser freezing up on screen and after repeated swipes on the touchpad it will eventually free itself. Yesterday I turned the unit on and once I hit my browser shortcut icon with the mousepad, the browser opened up and as soon as the webpage loaded the curser disappeared. I have rebooted numerous times trying to see if the problem would clear but to no avail. Does this sound like a driver issue and would the first step be to connect a satellite mouse via usb (which I don't have) to see if it will function that way?

 

Plodr, thanks for your response. I tried the hotkey fix as suggested in both threads but didn't work for me. The system updated about a week ago. I am trying to run system restore however that didn't work the first time. It first reported that several programs were bad (chrome, avg) so as s0oon as it comes back up I am going to see if the curser shows up if I run windows instead of chrome.

 

OK, did a system restore, when I thought it was finished it reported the restore was incomplete due to one or more corrupted programs. I undid the restore taking it back to its original date (curent) and then when it rebooted, I opened windows 8 as a browser rather than chrome which is my default and preferred brower. The curser functioned fine in windows so I said what the hell. i hit the FN+F5 keys several times and saw the window blink. I left windows open and clicked the chrome icon and it seems to be working now in both browsers. I have no clue what was going on but it seems to be functioning for the time being. Thanks so much for your help!