On my venerable Compaq EVO laptop, there's both a trackpad / touchpad and a "nipple" mouse pointer in the middle of the keyboard.
I can't get on with the trackpad, partly for the reasons you mention - inadvertently moving the cursor being the major one - so I disabled the touchpad in the BIOS, just keeping the "nipple" active. Perhaps there's a similar setting in your laptop BIOS.
As to why the system locks up - umpteen reasons, from overheating to driver problems via application software!
See if there's any errors in the event log and ensure that you have the correct up-to-date drivers loaded from the hardware vendor's website - including firmware updates.
SD