Synaptics touchpad control panel isn't working correctly

[Toast12345]

The machine has a synaptics touchpad and the synaptics precision touchpad driver is installed, but i have no snyaptics tab in my mouse/touchpad configuration menu.  I specifically want to enable momentum motion for the cursor but it's nowhere to be found.  I can access the synaptics control panel by typing "synaptics" in the start menu, but the control panel flickers like its in conflict with something that is trying to close it, and it doesn't have the momentum option (although it does have many other options).

This is on a fresh installation of windows from HP-supplied recovery media.  The momentum and control panel worked fine before updating windows to the latest version (1909?) through microsoft update, but after the update the synaptics touchpad started behaving as described and momentum is not working.

I tried to uninstall the synaptics driver and reinstall, but HP's reinstall won't work.  The HP installation process requires the driver to be removed first, but uninstalling the driver won't complete until the computer is rebooted.  During the reboot the driver magically comes back.  Just to compound the weirdness the driver doesn't show up in the installed programs list, I am uninstalling from the device manager.

[Toast12345 · Accepted solution]

Here I go, answering my own question ...

I discovered that I could go to old drivers by clicking on 'update driver' and selecting the option to search on my own machine.  There are drivers  that are SMB drivers and then there are PS2 compatible drivers.  All of the SMB drivers result in a nicer user interface but do NOT have the momentum option.  I installed a PS2 compatible driver and all is well -- I have the momentum option, the Synaptics tab on the mouse control panel is there, everything seems to work perfectly.