Hi Guys, I have a rebuilt Dell Latitude D630 and was wondering if anybody knows how to disable the mousepad so I can use my external mouse.
Plugging in a USB mouse or mouse dongle usually activates the mouse automatically. You don’t have to disable any existing one unless it interferes with your positioning (e.g., you keep brushing or tapping the mousepad and causing the cursor to jump around).
Every laptop I’ve had has had either a hardware disable switch or a disable mode in the driver, which usually has a tray icon - look under “customize” to see if the icon is hidden.
Note that the touchpad will work fine with the mouse driver built into Windows. However, if you install the driver specific to the touchpad/pointing stick from Dell’s website, you should be able to disable one or both of these. I think there’s an option to disable them automatically when an external mouse is connected. Go to support.dell.com to get the “Dell Touchpad/Pointing Stick Driver.”
I agree with Dewey Finn. I have a Dell Latitude E6400, and had to download and install a driver from their site to disable the touch-pad when a USB mouse was plugged in.
On other laptops, there is often an F# key to disable the touch-pad. Look at the little icons on F1, F2, etc. On this laptop, for example, I can hold the Fn button, and press F6, and that disables the touch-pad. Which F# button varies from laptop to laptop.
On my wife’s, and on my older laptop, there was a separate button right next to the touch-pad.