I recently updated to Windows 8.1 and noticed that my Elan Touchpad features no longer worked at boot-up and that the dynamic icon was missing from the toolbar. I went into the "mouse" settings in the control panel and noticed that the driver was still loaded. More interestingly, after hitting OK, the dynamic icon appears and the gestures worked.
Of course, I tried to update to the Elan drivers, but upon doing so, I noticed that the gestures were different, and specifically, the four-finger gestures to switch to between the desktop and start menu was missing. Because of this, I uninstalled the updated driver and tried to revert to the older one with the four-finger gestures. Ever time I tried to install the older driver, however, the installation would crash and the system would auto-repair back to the old Windows state where the Elan Touchapd features were missing until I loaded up the Mouse menu and hit OK.
Any ideas on how to fix this issue, besides placing a shortcut on the desktop to make it easier to load the control panel's "mouse" menu? Is there another driver available where the four-finger gestures are working?