Macbook Air (2013) trackpad not responding

The trackpad fails to respond after the computer got hung on a website video last night and then went into sleep mode. On wakeup I had to use the arrow keys to toggle through various apps and quit them, then held down power button to allow shutdown. It took 3 times through this routine before I got all apps shutdown before a shutdown. On restart, STILL no trackpad.

Just installed Catalina a week ago. No problems with trackpad initially, probably unrelated to Catalina?

I can use a USB or wireless mouse. I ran Disk First Aid, no help, no problems found. Should I reset the PRAM or something? How is that done? -- hold down P, R, command and option on restart bong? Cannot recall.

I tried SMC reset guided by the excellent Apple tech support. But it did not solve the problem. Just as PRAM zapping did not.

His suggestion of removing 2 plist items from the library did solve(!) the problem.

• ~/Library/preferences/com.apple.driver.AppleBluetoothMultitouch.trackpad.plist
• ~/Library/preferences/com.apple.AppleMultitouchTrackpad.plist

Apparently, one of these two got damaged; trashing them with a RESTART generates fresh plist files. Problem solved, thanks Apple!