How do I disable my laptop touchpad?

My Compaq something has a button directly below the spacebar, and I can press it to disable the touchpad. It's really helpful :D

I would NOT disable the track pad. I did once, then went on a trip and forgot to take my mouse along. Far from home, I wanted to use the laptop but could not!

As a PC repair person, I often get the same request!!

It's frustrating to try to explain to people that "in your model we can do that". When do they came with a unified control panel?

I cut a piece of stiff paper like a 3X5 card large enough to cover the touch pad and buttons. I then taped one end to the laptop. It is stiff enough that it doesn't transmit an accidental touch to the pad, and if I need to use the laptop and don't have an external mouse handy, I just flip over the piece of paper and use the pad.

This is a rather interesting area of 'problem'?
I recently did some work on a friend's laptop and was really annoyed there was no way in her software of disabling the Touchpad. As a bit of a 'try something and hope' I loaded the driver from my OWN laptop (quite different manufacturer) and... it worked fine!

HOWEVER..... if you mess with this ALWAYS make sure you have a PS2 (plugin) mouse available and know how to reload the mouse/pad driver!!!

Personally I always carry a small PS2 mouse with me that plugs in via a USB.

In passing, the gentleman who left his mouse at home and his keypad (and even the left/right buttons?) were disabled.... try 'playing' around with the cursor keys combined with Shift, Ctrl and Alt?? Believe it or not my first PC did not have a mouse!! This was the ONLY way to navigate!

Many laptops have a key combination to disable the touchpad temporarily. Check your operating guide. As an example, Acer laptops use Fn F7. I have had customers complain their touch pad doesn't work and they have accidently turned it off!

Don't forget that you can usually disable TouchPads in Device Manager. This can be easily reversed if needed, and is alot easier and safer to do then dismantling the notebook.

Actually I believe this isn't true, in that if the device has the granularity to show up separately in device manager, then it probably also shows up separately in control panel. The problem case is where the mouse + touchpad are implemented as a single driver that simply looks like only a mouse.

09-Sep-2009

Isn't that what expired credit cards are made for? I cover my (hated) touchpad at home as well, but I certainly wouldn't disable it, for traveling.

2 things:
a) Some laptops also have options in bios to deal w/the touchpad, e.g., Fujitsu Lifebooks; &
b) For those who think windows cannot be used w/o a mouse--I happen to be blind. Blind people can *not* use a mouse, but we can use windows via keyboard. & believe this or not, sometimes it can actually be faster than clicky Mickey. Just FYI.

My HP Pavilion dv7 laptop has a tiny red/white light with a narrow button to its right which can be clicked "on" or "off". This is immediately above the touch-pad. I was wondering why the pointer was jumping all over the screen while I was typing. No more. When you're mouse-less, just click to get the white light...Touch-pad is on and ready for use.
But, jeeeez, it takes so much extra fingering to control the pointer, plus separate clicks of those separate left-right buttons in lieu of the mouse itself.
Keep a mouse in your pants pocket....no one will notice..... ;)

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