Please Help! Frustrated!

Let me start out by telling you what I have. I just bought a Sony Viao Touch Screen computer. It's running Windows 8 64 bit operating system. It has 8GB ram and 2TB hard drive and runs at 2.50GHZ on four CPU's.

Now here's my problem.

Every single time I install any program (so far I've tried VLC media player, Open Office, and Windows Media Lite Player) the touch screen becomes unresponsive . I tried the chat tech support with Sony and they couldn't help so I initially fixed this on my own.

I opened the "control panel" then opened "hardware and sound". Usually when the touch screen was working there was an option in "hardware and sound" for "pen and touch". Well after my touch screen crashed I noticed this option was no longer there, it plain disappeared! So, I backed out and opened the "control panel" again. This time I went to "hardware and sound" and again no "pen and touch" option. So, I opened "devices and printers" instead thinking it was a device bug. Sure enough I noticed the device "home" had a yellow exclamation mark on it. I right clicked and ran the trouble-shooter. The trouble-shooter found the device had been disabled. The trouble shooter re-enabled the device and the touch screen came back on. But, now randomly the touch screen will become disabled and I have to do it all over again! EVERY SINGLE TIME I INSTALL ANYTHING! I've also noticed at the start screen (before I installed anything) when I opened internet explorer the "touch friendly" explorer would open. Now, after various installs, no matter what I do when I open the internet explorer from the start screen it will divert to the desktop and run the desktop version of explorer - nothing I've done will seem to fix this! I even restored the computer to the time before the installs and the "touch friendly" explorer seems to have vanished.

PLEASE HELP! My wife is getting frustrated with this new computer and wants me to send it back but I'd rather see if you guys can help me first I appreciate any help you can offer!

It sounds like a driver problem. W8 will detect if a touch screen is enabled and make the changes you talk about, so as long as the touch screen is working, your other touch options should be intact. I would look at the Sony site and see if there are any updated drivers/firmware for the model you have (which you didn't mention, or I'd have looked it up for you).

It's a new PC. exchange it. Or if you don't want to do that, you should have a restore disc that came with your PC to return it to the original Sony state.

some tips:

1) do not run the touch calibration tools. they're there in case something goes really wrong. Touch should work out of the box. I'm a pro-active person and when I got my Acer touchscreen monitor, I ran the Windows calibration tools because I wanted it optimized but it only messed it up completely. Luckily, there was a "reset to default" option which restored the touch.

2) in order to keep it the metro version of IE and not default to the desktop version, you have to have IE as the default web browser. Whenever you select another browser as the default (such as Chrome or Firefox), clicking on the Metro IE will load the desktop IE.

3) don't install any third-party firewall/antivirus program, especially one that doesn't specifically have Windows 8 support. These programs will conflict with the built-in firewall/antivirus resulting in very erratic behavior. If you choose to use the third-party software, make sure it's configured properly to allow program access and that you fully disable the built-in Windows Defender.

4) when you have your Sony back to its original state, make a backup or disc image. Also create a system restore state. Then when you're installing your favorite programs, do so individually and try to pinpoint what may be causing the problem. If anything goes wrong, you can rollback to the system restore checkpoint, including driver changes. Also, the drivers themselves can be rolled back individually to the last working configuration.

If your drivers are not correct when you roll the Sony back to the original Sony state, then exchange it. There's something wrong with the PC as it should come out of the factory with all the drivers fully installed correctly.

Thank you both for the quick answers. I downloaded the newest update and drivers and seem to not have a problem with the touch screen right now, hopefully that lasts! Also, the problem with the IE has been fixed I just had to make the IE the default browser not the "IE Desktop" thank you very much!