Touch Screen not Working. Having Problem disabling driver

[userld]

My Touch screen stopped working after my Warrantee expired. There was circles blinking all over my monitor and my mouse would be skipping around the screen and incontrollable. The problem was solved by disabling the Touch Screen driver .

I recently did a clean install of Windows 10. I still disabled the driver, but it loads the driver whenever I reboot. This did not happen before. Also now when the driver loads, it causes folders and programs to open randomly! If the driver will not stay disabled, can I DELETE the Touch Screen driver without causing problems with my monitor?

Thanks, LD

[BeemerBiker]

Deleting the driver and actually removing it from the system should cause no other problems.   Optional updates show up in the advanced options dialog box.  It is possible that Microsoft thinks the touchscreen is not optional in which case the problem will show up on the next feature release.

If deleting the driver and removing does not solve the problem there is a way to do it using the app "devcon.exe'.  It is complicated so come back here and ask about it if deleting the driver does not work.

[EDIT] Possible problem:  Is the touch screen separate from the display driver?  If so there should be no problem deleting it.

If the "Touch Screen" is the display driver then yes, possibly a problem.  For example:  On my Surface Pro I have Intel 520 for the display driver and under "HID compliant touch screen" is the driver for the touch.  I would have to delete the HID compliant and NOT the display driver.  I have inadvertently deleted the display driver but thankfully Microsoft know better than me and puts it back in on the next reboot.

Touch screens are really useful.  I assume you installed the chipset and latest drivers to try to fix the problem.

[userld]

Thanks for the reply.  A couple of years ago the Touch Screen stopped working. Circles would blink all over the screen and my mouse would go crazy. I was told in a forum to go to Human Interface Devices and disable the touch screen. That Worked fine for years till the recent fresh Windows 10 install. After the Fresh install I went back into the Device Manger and again disabled the Touch Screen HID Compliant controller, however, it reloaded every time the computer reboots and/or when computer wakes up! The random blinking opens up programs and folders.

So after your message I removed the Touch Screen driver instead of disabling... However, the Touch Screen Driver STILL installs upon sleep or reboot. It still randomly clicks and opens programs or folders. Very crazy. 

Any other ideas?

Thanks. LD

[BeemerBiker]

That is unfortunate.  BTW, I recently had to replace the touch screen on my Surface Pro 4.  The battery was the one that needed to be replaced but the screen shattered the first time I tried to lift it off.  Pictures here 

OK, there is a way to disable the touch screen driver.  Maybe some of the MVP'ers here know a better way but this worked for me.  

We are going to put a script together that will disable the touch screen.  The script will be created in your document folder and you can run the script by selecting it and clicking "run as administrator".  If you are up to it you can then create a task using windows 10 "task scheduler" to run the script for you when you or anyone logs in.

You will need one or both of the following

devcon.exe 

devcon64.exe

They can be obtain for free by installing splashtop streamer and looking for it in the Program Files x86 folder

or you can get it from me here https://stateson.net/devcon.zip  Unzip the two executables and put them into

your document directory.

You will need to know the device driver "name" of your touch screen.  You find that (as you know)  by bringing up the device manager. Select it and look at properties and details for the name of the driver. Mine is shown in the below picture.  The name of my touch screen driver comes from

HID\VEN_8086&DEV_9D3E&SUBSYS_00000000&REV_21&COL05\4&F87CE30&2&0004: HID-compliant touch screen

Copy the above into notepad.  The devcon app does not like the & so they need to be changed to *.  You can delete the colon and the words after it.  We now need to get the exact name of the device driver.  The above is close but wont work.

You will need to bring up the administrator command prompt as devcon needs to run as an administrator.

From inside the command prompt, change to your document folder cd c:\users\MyName\Documents

run the devcon app as follows (My example is below)

C:\Users\josep\Downloads>DEVCON64 FIND HID\VEN_8086*
HID\VEN_8086&DEV_9D3E&SUBSYS_00000000&REV_21&COL0A\4&F87CE30&2&0009: HID-compliant vendor-defined device
HID\VEN_8086&DEV_9D3E&SUBSYS_00000000&REV_21&COL09\4&F87CE30&2&0008: Surface Digitizer Integration
HID\VEN_8086&DEV_9D3E&SUBSYS_00000000&REV_21&COL08\4&F87CE30&2&0007: HID-compliant vendor-defined device
HID\VEN_8086&DEV_9D3E&SUBSYS_00000000&REV_21&COL07\4&F87CE30&2&0006: HID-compliant vendor-defined device
HID\VEN_8086&DEV_9D3E&SUBSYS_00000000&REV_21&COL06\4&F87CE30&2&0005: HID-compliant mouse
HID\VEN_8086&DEV_9D3E&SUBSYS_00000000&REV_21&COL05\4&F87CE30&2&0004: HID-compliant touch screen
HID\VEN_8086&DEV_9D3E&SUBSYS_00000000&REV_21&COL04\4&F87CE30&2&0003: HID-compliant pen
HID\VEN_8086&DEV_9D3E&SUBSYS_00000000&REV_21&COL03\4&F87CE30&2&0002: Surface Pen Settings
HID\VEN_8086&DEV_9D3E&SUBSYS_00000000&REV_21&COL02\4&F87CE30&2&0001: HID-compliant touch screen
HID\VEN_8086&DEV_9D3E&SUBSYS_00000000&REV_21&COL01\4&F87CE30&2&0000: HID-compliant vendor-defined device
10 matching device(s) found.

Edit the text string to get the exact name.  I finally got my touch screen driver with

C:\Users\josep\Downloads>DEVCON64 FIND HID*VEN_8086*DEV_9D3E*SUBSYS_00000000*REV_21*COL05*
HID\VEN_8086&DEV_9D3E&SUBSYS_00000000&REV_21&COL05\4&F87CE30&2&0004: HID-compliant touch screen
1 matching device(s) found.

Once the driver is found then the following will disable it

DEVCON64 DISABLE HID*VEN_8086*DEV_9D3E*SUBSYS_00000000*REV_21*COL05*

Create a file in your document folder name "DisableTS.cmd" and put the above line of code into it.

Anytime you want to disable the screen just select it and "run as administrator"

If you get tired of clicking on it then bring up "task scheduler" and run that DisableTS.cmd file whenever someone logs in . Be sure to select "elevated mode" so it runs with administrator privilege.  The MVP'ers over at answers.microsoft will fall all over themselves helping you or you can come back here.

HTH

[userld]

Wow that's a lot and a little above my pay grade, but I might try to follow the instructions and see if it works unless someone comes up with a different way. I did notice there are quite a few Touch Screen issues on here. I never really had the need for one although it was cool when it worked! It is an annoying problem. I thought I had it solved by telling the computer not to sleep, but it still seems to load that Touch Screen which somehow opens other folders and stuff on my desktop with those mystery ghost touches. 

Thanks.. Happy New Years

LD

[BeemerBiker]

I learned about how devcon works when I had an external USB drive that would not wake up after the computer went to sleep.

Devcon is a free tool that comes with some Microsoft "SDK".  The SDK is IMHO difficult to install and not needed except for that one single application so it is easier to download splashtop to get the app.

I used it to issue a reset to the device manager.  The "reset" causes  a search for new hardware which wakes up sleeping devices.  It can also be used to disable hardware that is not working correctly.

Your screen saver, hibernate or sleep requires a login so that defective touch screen is enabled again.

I have not tried it but possibly you can disable the login after the sleep to avoid the problem.  Of course, shutting down the system will cause the device to be re-activated.

If you want to do this, download that app, test it out, and I can give you  a walkthrough on setting up a windows tasks to issue the disable command after every login.