Inspiron 1545 touchpad freezing

"Returns to normal after logging out and back in (unresponsive even in login screen)"

sounds like a software issue.

there is a small chance that it is a hardware issue - in which case you could purchase the appropriate touch-pad for your model laptop on eBay. They are one of the cheapest replacement parts for a laptop!

I have the same problem. It doesn't matter what I'm doing the touchpad and/or the keyboard (though the touchpad is a much worse problem) can be randomly unresponsive for a few seconds (or in the keyboard's case, for a key or two). If I had to guess, I would say it was actually a processor problem. It is seemingly unaffected by what I'm running, though. I've played with startup and tried the new ALPS driver, but these have not helped. Before I buy a new touchpad (in case it's hardware, which I doubt, I wonder if there are any other possible solutions out there?

I have the same problem with 2 different 1545's. Both on Linux and Windows. Its seems to be a design flaw. They randomly click while trying to type too