Macbook Air (2013) trackpad not responding The trackpad fails to respond after the computer got hung on a website video last night and then went into sleep mode.  On wakeup I had to use the arrow keys to toggle through various apps and quit them, then held down power button to allow shutdown. It took 3 times through this routine before I got all apps shutdown before a shutdown.  On restart, STILL no trackpad.

Just installed Catalina a week ago.  No problems with trackpad initially, probably unrelated to Catalina?

I can use a USB or wireless mouse.   I ran Disk First Aid, no help, no problems found.  Should I reset the PRAM or something? How is that done?   -- hold down P, R, command and option on restart bong?  Cannot recall.
I tried SMC reset guided by the excellent Apple tech support.  But it did not solve the problem.  Just as PRAM zapping did not.

His suggestion of removing 2 plist items from the library did solve(!) the problem.


~/Library/preferences/com.apple.driver.AppleBluetoothMultitouch.trackpad.plist
~/Library/preferences/com.apple.AppleMultitouchTrackpad.plist


Apparently, one of these two got damaged; trashing them with a RESTART generates fresh plist files. Problem solved, thanks Apple!