I have pretty much the same issue. The keyboard mouse stick stops working and so does the touch pad. On investigating I see that the only active driver is for a regular mouse. My laptop is out of warranty but thankfully DELL still post the old downloads. I have found that re-installing the touch pad driver and rebooting brings back my stick and touchpad. It is no solution but it might help someone smart understand what is going on. Something is resetting which is the active driver. Another confirmation of this is that I have the pointer icon in my task bar and if I open the utility it shows a conventional mouse rather than touchpad. I am tempted to look for an updated driver from the manufacturer but I have not gone down that path yet.