If the touch pad is working in Safe Mode then a driver issue would not be the cause, and as you have indicated it's possible a 3ed party program is interfering. Norton Anti Virus does not run in safe mode and all of it's many drivers are not loaded in that mode. You could try from regular mode- disabling Norton and see, however this sometimes is not conclusive, because you are usually only disabling active scanning an a Norton driver or service is still causing issue. Norton's a constantly changing program with all it's up dates so it's alway's something to consider as with any Anti Virus when something works in safe Mode but not regular mode. One of the best ways to troubleshoot this issue is to use MSCONFIG, that's what that programs for and it may help to identify the issue, as described in the link provided. Here is a link that might be useful: msconfig-utility

found this info on other forums about a Dell latitude I will list all of the various ways that I saw; you can go to Control Panel > Mouse and select the Dell Touchpad tab. There should be a Device Select icon which will give you the option to turn off the touchpad and/or touchpad buttons. Alternatively, for those who want to turn off the pointing stick and/or pointing stick buttons, there are also options to disable or enable those. *Start-->Settings--Control Panel double-click mouse and there's an option there to disable the touchpad *"For all of you having trouble enabling or disabling the touchpad: Turn on or off the Fast Initialization button under hardware properties for the Touchpad. Fast Initialization = On, then reboot, you are now able to turn the touchpad On or Off from Mouse Properties Hope this helps, it was a PITA to figure out." *Just go to control pannel and double click on 'mouse'. There should then be a tab called 'Touch pad' and click on that. There should then be an option 'Tap off when typing' enable that and your problem should be solved. It also said that if you do not find those options there then it is possible your touchpad drivers are not installed which would allow you to make the changes. "If the control panel only shows things about a "mouse", the touchpad drivers are not installed. You could try www.synaptics.com for drivers." found this on the dell site *Customizing the Touch Pad and Track Stick You can use the Mouse Properties window to disable the touch pad and track stick or adjust their settings. Open the Control Panel, and then click Mouse. For information about the Control Panel, see Windows Help and Support Center. In the Mouse Properties window: * Click the Device Select tab to disable the touch pad and track stick. * Click the Touch Pad tab to adjust touch pad and track stick settings. Click OK to save the settings and close the window. I hope out of those maybe something will work

FWiW The Lenovo OneKey Recovery. It loads its own recovery environment but it does use the laptop display... and there are several mouse clicks to be able to use it. Lenovo has a couple of Recovery partitions & will load the operating system to the drives to a like new state. It also has restore backup and images capabilities if you set it up to do so from within windows originally. Sounds like the display or display adapter is bad, as it wont even run the display from outside of windows correctly. Or possibly the display drivers have been given a virus - Hooking up a separate monitor, if it works..run a virus scan - Or use the OneKey recovery to bring it back to the like new state, both might be might be worth a try.. before returning it to some distant repair center. I surely would do it here. The OneKey virus scan is actually McAfee that updates and scans boot sectors of all partitions and offers a quick or full everything scan... very long scans both of them. Its nice to have made the Recovery DVD Disks and keep those stored away safely too, for when the hard drive fails or becomes not accessible.

Because of travel and out of office use, the last laptops I used regularly were for work. Small Lenovo ThinkPads that (as I recall) had a drop in docking station kept on my desk for in-office use. That made it into the equivalent of a desktop, with a corded keyboard, a large display, and a mouse. I suspect the same would be done now with plugging in a few cords. For personal use, then as now, I have limited need for portability and have always had desktops for home use. I currently have several Lenovo All-in-Ones, each with a good sized touchscreen and a wireless keyboard and mouse. I am very happy with them. They're neat and leave the surface they're on uncluttered. There's only one cord, for power. What makes a laptop useful for travelling, a small size, makes them not useful as a day to day machine for home use. Sure, I could set up the equivalent of a docking station but I prefer to not have a cluttered appearance. If I were buying a new laptop today for travelling, I'd probably get a Chromebook with a 10 inch screen. I have a 10 inch Lenovo windows PC and it's the right size and is adequate for me for now. I don't like using tablets.