Installing Firefox and Flash broke Windows 8 I think

Since installing Firefox, and then Flash, the mouse key is just stuck on the home screen. Can't move it at all

tried Fn+F5 (lock/unlock trackpad) and it doesn't make a difference. If you lock it, the mouse works. Unlock it, and the mouse cursor is frozen again. Tried restarting, still doesn't work.

Windows 8 really is terrible. Got a laptop for my dad, and he can't figure out how to use it, so I need to show him, but the thing is even I'm confused by it compared to Windows 7 and XP

Nevermind. It's just because pressing F5 will turn the trackpad on/off, instead of Fn+F5

 

I don't see how a browser and Flash mess with your track-pad? Are you sure it's not a drive key assignment issues not related to either of those two? It sounds more like a bad or corrupted trackpad driver? Did you uninstall and restart and reinstalled the trackpad driver?

 

I thought that, so I uninstalled Flash, and the Syanptics touchpad drivers (had to go through appwiz.cpl because I can't figure out how to get into the control panel in Windows 8)

I worked it out anyway, it's because I was pressing Ctrl+F5 to refresh the page, but this was actually like pressing Fn+F5 so locking/unlocking the trackpad

Of course when I pressed Fn+F5 to unlock it, it was ignoring it and just doing the F5 function (which doesn't really do anything noticable on the desktop)

 

On the desktop, right click the bottom left hot corner or pull out the charms bar, click on settings and you can open the control panel from there.

If it's a Thinkpad (I know they have the Ctrl and Fn button position reversed), you can switch the way both buttons behave in the bios. If you're used to having Ctrl to the complete left, it will avoid messing your the spacial awareness of the keyboard.