That’s where the heels of my hands go when I type. And touchpads were created by Satan.
Yes. There’ll be something in the settings to deactivate the touchpad.
With every laptop I’ve had, you could set it to automatically deactivate the touchpad when mouse was plugged in (and reactivate when the mouse is unplugged). First thing I set whenever I get a new one.
Every laptop I’ve had that had a touchpad also had a keyboard shortcut to toggle the touchpad. Fn+F7 seems to be a popular combination. Look or above on your function keys to see if any of them have a touchpad logo, and if so, try pressing that key, either alone or by in combination with the special Fn key.
I once used a laptop (with mouse) that one day had a little red light start showing at the top of the touchpad that had never been there before. Googling, I found that it meant that the touchpad had been deactivated, and that you could activate/deactivate by double-tapping (or possibly triple-tapping) in the upper left corner of the pad. That could be brand-specific, though.
As another example, I have an old Acer Aspire S7. If you zoom in on the keyboard in the picture here you can just make out the key combinations. Fn + T toggles the touchpad on and off.
I had one laptop with a touchpad that you couldn’t disable, but only one. Every other laptop I’ve had has the ability to disable its touchpad.
So there are some out there that can’t be disabled, but they are pretty rare.
There is no universal method for disabling the touchpad. It varies from laptop to laptop. If you google your specific laptop you should be able to find instructions for it easily enough.
It’s an RCA-branded POS. None of the tips work and there is nothing in TFM, which I R’ed before asking. My solution was to recover with black duck tape the paired business cards I had taped over the touchpad.
Black duck tape; just the thing if you want your projects to not look as half-assed as they really are.
Poking around on google, it looks like some RCA laptops are like the one that I had in that the touchpad couldn’t be disabled. If this is the case for your laptop, if you are pretty handy with computer and electronics repair type stuff you can carefully open up the laptop, disconnect the ribbon cable from the touchpad, and carefully put the laptop back together again. No duct tape required. While my laptop wasn’t an RCA, this is exactly what I did to disable the touchpad.
Some RCAs have a little symbol under the ESC key whose meaning may not be obvious, but it’s intended to represent the touchpad. If yours has this symbol, FN+ESC will disable the touchpad.
I have a HP laptop with no option to disable to touchscreen. When I contacted the vendor they confirmed it. I suppose I could uninstall the device but that coudl be a problem down the road if I have issues with my mouse.
Long a go I had a laptop with a touch pad you couldn’t disable. I found that 3 of the yellow Post-it notes were thick evough that it didn’t sense a fandom touch. And it I wanted to use the touch pad I just slipped my hand under them.
I have an ASUS laptop which has no way I can find to turn it off. Settings just lets you change the sensitivity. I had an old Toshiba laptop which did let you disable it.
I get around it with a wireless keyboard.
I have an Acer that randomly disables it’s own touchpad. I can use the FN+F7 (which is printed on the keys) when I want, but when the computer feels like it, it turns off the device at the driver level. And I have to navigate into devices and settings to the touchpad and disable and reenable the driver without a mouse. Which is fun.
So if you’re trying to turn it off, you might disable or uninstall that driver.
Friend of mine has an HP laptop (Pavilion?), came with Win8 installed. There is NO way to disable the touchpad. Even “uninstalling” it from Device Manager is overridden by the next startup.
What’s the brand?
I’ve used IBM/Lenovo laptops for years now and I’ve always managed to disable the touchpad. I hated it and never used it. I love the little trackpoint ( the finger operated mouse button located in the middle of the keyboard.) I’m so used to it that I falter when I encounter a laptop without one.
Be sure to look in the settings for the mouse as well as the touchpad. On my laptop in the mouse properties there is a checkbox that says “Disable internal pointing device when external USB pointing device is attached.” So if I plug in a wired mouse or a dongle for a wireless mouse, it automatically disables the touchpad.
I’ve learned to live (however grudgingly) with the touchpad. But the real feature from Hell, as far as I’m concerned, is making the touchpad itself also the button. This is an Apple laptop of not-quite-new vintage. (Don’t know the exact model off-hand. It’s a hand-me-down from a friend.)
I had an earlier hand-me-down (from same friend) that had the button below the touchpad. I could cope with that.
But making the pad itself be the button was definitely some brilliant designers Idea From The Depths Of Hell. I sure hope that neither Apple nor any other manufacturer ever built another model with this abomination.
This is a confusing linguistic/technical feature. “uninstalling” from Device Manager doesn’t “uninstall” it from your Computer, and doesn’t mark it to be ignored – both of which are possible, but only by obscure methods which involve the registry or the files on your computer.
That sounds like you laid down some cards and secured them with tape over the top. That’s a good way but just make sure the tape isn’t stuck to the touch sensitive surface. It’s more delicate that the rest of the housing and may not respond well to being lifted when the tape is removed. There might be problems with scraping or chemicals if the adhesive leaves a residue, too.