How to Disable Touchpad

[HB3]

Unable to disable touchpad on hp mini 2000. Regular way will not work. Help,please

[shelleypiano]

It worked!! Thank you so much for your post regarding deactivating the touchpad!!

[Elm88]

They seem to have got rid of the "device settings" tab... when I go onto Mouse the only tabs are buttons, pointers, pointer options, wheel, hardware. Under hardware you can click Properties and then Change Settings, but the Disable button is deactivated for the touchpad mouse (though not for my USB mouse). It's such a nightmare because it makes my cursor jump all the time when I type - just typing this message it's happened 5 times! Help!

[AttackofZaq]

Hello Elm88.

You can also disable the device from the Device Manager.  Try the following.

1. Click Start, type "Device Manager," and press Enter.
2. Expand the "Mice and other pointing devices" section.
3. Right click on your touchpad and select "Disable.

I hope this helps!

[Johann77]

It lists my touchpad here as PS/2 Compatible Mouse, and there is no option to disable in the context menu. My USB mouse does however have that option.

[Elm88]

@Johann77 - sounds like we have exactly the same issue.

@AttackofZaq - the whole point is that I can't "disable" the touchpad, because the "disable" option is greyed out. I can only disable my USB mouse.

[Johann77]

@Elm88 I have taken the advice of downloading a Synaptics touchpad driver from HP. My problem only started after I had to re-instal Windows on my laptop. And I know that prevously I had disabled Synaptics touchpad. I suspect that windows should not be recognizing the touchpad as PS/2 Compatible Mouse. Busy downloading driver. Will let you know if it works.

[Johann77]

@Elm88 Yay, Yay, Yipee. It worked. It worked!

[Elm88]

Ooh exciting! You might need to walk me through this a bit though as I'm a computer dunce. First, can you send me the link to the thing you downloaded to do this, and then describe step by step what you did with it?

Also, are you now able to disable/enable the touchpad as and when you want, or is it a permanent disabling?

[Johann77]

@Elm88. Its pretty simple:

Go to: http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/ProductRoot.jsp?taskId=135

go through a number of selection steps narrowing down to your particular model of computer, starting at laptops and netbooks. Mine has a sticker on for energy star, so I chose that option when I had got to the last selection step.

then choose drivers for mouse etc

I then chose to download the synaptics touchpad driver - it is about 35 megs.

download the file to somewhere on your computer.

Once downloaded, run the file - and follow the installation steps it provides.

You will need to restart your computer for the changes to take effect.

Once re-started, those options that we were not able to see before, become available - control panel/mouse/device settings. In device settings you can tick the checkbox for "disable internal pointing device when external USB pointing device is attached". Then only when you plug in an external mouse does the touchpad automatically become disabled. But there is also an option to disable it completely.

What a pleasure to be able to type again, without jumping around the screen!