This isn't a travel tech issue, per se, but everyone on the tech boards has been so helpful in the past that I'm turning to you first!

Lenovo ThinkPad laptop, about 18 months old, running Windows 8.1

A month or so ago, my Synaptic mouse (touchpad) stopped working correctly. Every time I'd reboot my computer, it reverted to the default settings, which I hate. When I'd go into the mouse settings on the control panel, I have to sit through ~5 messages telling me it wasn't working properly and then asking me if I wanted to uninstall it. I'd click the no/don't uninstall button every time, eventually get into the mouse settings, reconfigure everything and it would world fine until I rebooted again.

Last week I finally uninstalled the driver and reinstalled it. All has worked fine. I no longer got the Synaptic error message.

Today I restarted my computer and the wonky mouse settings were back, I again got the Synaptic error message. Simultaneously I notice that I'd been logged out of several of the sites that I'm always logged into (including Flyertalk and Yahoo Mail). Sure, login credentials expire, but Yahoo also thought I was signing in from an unrecognized device -- despite it being the same computer and browser I've been using for 18 months -- and forced me to go through the two-step authentication.

I can't help but wonder if the wonky mouse settings and "unknown" computer are related. Any suggestions as to what might be going on? And possible solutions (preferably ones that don't involve wiping my entire computer and reinstalling Windows)? (And also preferably solutions that don't involve "buy a Mac," since I hear that one from my boyfriend on a daily basis.)