Can I disable the touchpad on my laptop?

skintchick

I have a Dell Inspirion 6000, which i use as my everyday computer, and so I have a plug in mouse.

But I find that I constantly knock the touchpad and end up with my cursor where I don;t want it, and therefore type where I don't want it, which is incredibly frustrating.

Is there a way of turning the pad off?

theCapt

there is usally a hotkey short cut Fn button and one of the F keys, failing that try the control panel, failing that try the BIOS failing that get a freeware program, failing that use someone elses suggestion

skintchick

Can't find anything in control panels that would help me I'm not very good at technical stuff

nearlyrich

It can be done because I have done it by accident, if you don't get an answer I will ask around some of my techie colleagues.

Tallymanjohn

Have a look in the system tray for a touchpad icon - Synaptics is a common manufacturer's name for it, then right-click that & choose 'properties'. In there you'll find the options to turn off particular functions of the keypad, or the whole keypad completely.

skintchick

Er...what's the system tray?

thomas01155

go on contorl panel and click on the mouse icon you might be able to disable it there

theCapt

the thing in the right bottem corner with the time and network connection status as well as other stuff.

skintchick

I searched help and got this:

PS/2 Wheel Mouse Jumps Around Screen on Laptops with Touchpads
View products that this article applies to.
Article ID : 282753
Last Review : January 15, 2006
Revision : 1.1
This article was previously published under Q282753
SYMPTOMS
If you have a laptop computer and you are using a PS/2 wheel mouse, you may encounter erratic behavior with the mouse, such as the cursor jumping all over the screen; however, the built-in touchpad may work fine.
Back to the top

CAUSE
This problem occurs because wheel mouse devices may be incompatible with some laptops, unless the laptop has special hardware to handle them. The wheel mouse transmits in 4-byte packets, while the internal touch pad transmits in 3-byte sequences. PS/2 devices are designed in such a way that the operating system may not be aware of an additional pointing device, nor of what the packet boundaries are between the different devices.

If the operating system interprets the packet alignment incorrectly, it may misinterpret data, thus causing erratic movements and clicks.
Back to the top

RESOLUTION
To work around this problem, create a hardware profile in which the mouse is enabled and the touchpad is disabled.


But the help for the hardware profile has confused me and I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do. It talks about indokcing and dial in dial out stuff which doesn;t sound right. Help!

skintchick

theCapt wrote:

the thing in the right bottem corner with the time and network connection status as well as other stuff.

It's not on there, other stuff is but not that - can;t find anything except what I just posted. Oh ! I am so rubbish!

Tallymanjohn

OK, try this - go to Start, then Control Panel (or Start, settings, control panel), then look under either 'mouse' or 'printers and other hardware', then 'mouse'. Look for the 'touch' tab & you should (hopefully) see a 'disable this device' option. Put a tick in the box, click OK & close Control Panel. Sorry for the number of alternatives, it depends on how you have your laptop set up. If there isn't a 'touch' tab, check each of the tabs & see if it's under another option.

If the mouse you're using is a PS2 type (small, round, multi-pin plug) this may be causing your problems as the touchpad uses the same method of connecting (though internally). You may find fewer problems if you have a USB connecting mouse.