hp pavilion windows 10 touchpad malfunctioning (with moderate memory usage?)

[eclectix]

laptop igpktj17, updated to latest windows 10 (version 1809, updated 2020-05) with latest touchpad driver, 12 gb memory.

running semi-expired mcafee anti-virus.

i typically run chrome and photoshop.  i typically have about 10 chrome windows open.

at this time the touchpad starts acting strange.  it ignores my selection clicks and instead seems to prefer to try to select (and sometimes only select).

besides rebooting, i found two workarounds:

Workaround 1 - kill and restart chrome (and perhaps any other memory hog, but chrome seems to be enough in most cases)

Workaround 2 - blow on the keyboard.  this typically works only once, and then i have to do it repeatedly from that point forward

This happens so often that I am starting to dread working on the laptop as it becomes exhausting.

I have not tried using a mouse yet but i feel as if should not be forced into doing so, especially since the problem seems OS related.  a driver bug, relating to some kind of memory hole?  it feels as if the driver is programmed to perform the least memory intensive operation that it can, given a user input and no memory available to do the actual user intended operation.

i sense there are memory hole issues throughout windows but in my experience it has never been quite so bad as this.

right now according to task manager (which sometimes seems to lie, but anyway) memory is 57% utilized, and chrome is using 1821 Mb.

i hate windows with a passion.  i wish i could afford a mac.

[eclectix]

i first tried chat.  they listened to the problem and suggested i contact hp smart friend (real person telephone support).

i contacted hp telephone support.  this took a while (first, i was redirected online to the site https://www.hp.com/go/pchelp which did not exist, so i had to search for an equivalent.  once i found that, i had to get a case number). they had me update the elan touchpad driver.  i did that and restarted (note: according to update history, apparently it did nothing and so may not have been needed).

after rebooting, i spawned 14 chrome windows, one of which i used for yahoo mail login and another for watching a youtube video.  according to task manager, the chrome virtual memory usage went up to 1350 Mb, at which point the touchpad problem returned.  i killed the chrome process and restarted it, going a bit more slowly.  the problem still returned once the chrome virtual memory usage went up to about 1109 Mb...

I am currently running with google chrome process taking about 778 Mb of virtual memory (22 threads), with no video views attempted.  This does not seem like a very palatable workaround...