Uninstall Touch screen driver permanently

[Michael_HPUSer]

Hello, 

I bought a HP Envy 27-p019nb All-In-One and have had ghost-clicking issues since ca. 1 month after purchase. As I don't use the touchscreen at all and want to work around a hardware change, I followed the HP forum advice to disable/uninstal the touch screen driver in the device manager. 

Now, the amazing thing about this fix is that the driver gets automatically re-enabled or even reinstalled without any notification or permission. I therefore spend around 10 minutes daily to try to reach the device manager, right-click on the appropriate driver and disable it again (which can be difficult, seen that ghost-clicks activate other windows all 1-5 seconds). By now, I am a huge fan of this PC!

Can somebody provide me with instructions on how to disbale or uninstal this driver permanently? 

Thanks!

[Levi_J]

Hello,

There is a way to disable the automatic reload of the driver. However, it will  alsodo this for all drivers.

Start by right-clcking the WIndows Start Menu> System> Advanced System Settings> Hardware Tab> Device Installation Settings> Select No> Apply.

[Michael_HPUSer]

Can you confirm that there is no alternative that will only disable the right driver ?

[Levi_J]

As of now, there is no way disable only one driver for automatic updates.

[Michael_HPUSer]

I found this article and installed the tool to prevent specific windows updates. It provides me with a list of drivers (see picture) but I am not sure if any of these is relevant for my problem. 

Is any of these drivers related to the HID-Touch screen? 

[Levi_J]

Yes, that appears to be related to Windows specific software.

What I had provided is for hardware enabling drivers. What you downloaded wouldn't apply to this, unfortunately.

[Michael_HPUSer]

Ok, too bad. But thanks for the response anyways. Much appreciated!

[kmaughan]

Hi Michael_HPUser,

Evidently there is no way to prevent automatic driver updates from within Windows itself (at least none that I could find) however this  site explains that  Microsoft has provided a downloadable tool for this purpose. 'Step Three: Prevent a Driver or Update From Being Installed from Windows Update' has instructions and link to the tool on Microsoft's support site.

[Michael_HPUSer]

Hi,  seems to be the same tool I mentioned 2 post earlier. I think its a dead-end, and your colleague agrees... 😉

[Michael_HPUSer · Accepted solution]

Hi,

I fixed this issue permanently.

1. I downloaded the devcon.exe tool from windows to disable drivers in the cmd line.

2. I created a new task that triggers on the event "power- troubleshooter" and runs "with highest privileges" (i.e. as admin). The task calls a "RunBatchSilent.vbs" file, which in turn runs a batch called "disable touchscreen.bat" to disable the driver. 

Here is the code for the VBS: 

Dim WinScriptHost
Set WinScriptHost = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
WinScriptHost.Run Chr(34) & "C:\TouchScreenFix\disable touchscreen.bat" & Chr(34), 0
Set WinScriptHost = Nothing

And here the code for the batch:

cd C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\Tools\x64
devcon.exe disable "@YourDeviceInstancePathGoesHERE"
exit

- The VBS makes sure you don't see the cmd window poping up when the task runs. 

- The batch uses devcon.exe to disable the driver based on the drivers' device instance path. This path can be foud in the Device Manager>>Properties>>Details and needs to be prefixed with @.

- Eventually, the underlined code needs to be adapted.

Result: When starting/waking up the PC, the driver gets always disbaled. Of course you can set up other triggers to run the task. 

Hope this helps, 

Michael