Disabling Elan touchpad

[HairyOlMan]

I need to turn off the Elan touchpad on my computer.  I have a disability that makes it impossible to hold my left hand up off the pad.  I do graphics, so my right hand is holding a USB mouse while my left hand does all the keyboard actions.   Because I can't hold my hand up, it drags across the touchpad and moves the curser without any control.  I've searched online for 3 days and tried about 20 things, but can't find something that works to turn the touchpad off.

[sandytechy20]

@HairyOlMan

Welcome to the HP support community.

I understand that you want to disable the Elan touchpad, follow these steps to disable it.

1. Press Windows Key + X to open Win + X menu and select Control Panel from the list.
2. When Control Panel opens, go to Hardware and Sound section and select Mouse.
3. When Mouse settings window opens, you should see ELAN or Device Settings tab. Switch to it.
4. Locate Disable internal pointing device when external USB pointing device is attached option and enable it.
5. Click Apply and OK to save changes.

If that doesn't work or isn't available, a registry edit should be the solution for us, I'd personally suggest a registry backup by clicking on file and export before performing the below steps, to be on a safer side:

1. Open Registry Editor and go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Elantech/Othersetting/DisableWhenDetectUSBMousekey in the left pane.
2. Change the value from 0 to 1 and close Registry Editor.

• After making those changes your touchpad will now be disabled every time you connect a mouse to your laptop. As you can see, even though this option isn’t available, you can still enable it by following these steps. We have to mention that this solution applies only if you’re using ELAN touchpad.

Let me know how it goes.

To thank me for my efforts to help you, please mark my post as an accepted solution so that it benefits several others.

Cheers.