MS upgraded me to Win 10 without permission. One problem (with games) was solved thanks to gurus at TSD. Now I have another. With Win 7, I was able to use the control panel to disable the touch pad. With Win 10, it is reenabled and now whenever I type, like now, I will accidentally brush the pad and see the cursor move several lines. But in the control panel there is now no option to disable the touch pad. Does anyone know how to do this?
Search for mouse properties and see if there is an option under the hardware tab to disable it.
Glad you got the games fixed, I already got used to the new ones but I may try the fix from the other thread.
I have that problem with W10 losing device settings. I turn off the touch pad and the stupid touch screen and eventually they’ll be enabled again. I have some other compatibility issues more important now, hoping VMWare makes an adjustment for the 4K screen, but I have to get those annoying device resets to stop also.
Oh dear… did Microsoft do that thing where they forced an upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10, on you?
If you’re not happy with Windows 10, there should be a way to revert back to your previous edition of Windows. It’s somewhere in the Control Panel/Settings. You’ve got to do it within a month of “upgrading” to Windows 10.
Here’s a link for downgrading Windows 10 to Windows 7 or 8.1.
I think it depends on your hardware. I’m running Windows 10 on a Toshiba laptop. If I go to Control Panel and click on “Mouse,” I get a pop-up box with several tabs. The very last tab (furthest to the right) is labeled “ELAN,” which I assume is the brand name of my touch pad. On that tab, there is a check box to disable the touch pad when an external pointing device (i.e., a mouse) is plugged in. It seems to work fine, and stays disabled.
Control Panel itself can be pretty hard to find in Win 10. You can get to it through the Settings button on the Start menu, but it’s easier to just go to the search field (just right of the Start Button) and type Control Panel. It will pop right up. You might want to right-click and pin it to the start menu for easier access next time you use it.
If you right click on the windows icon you’ll see control panel right there.
I can’t find touchpad entries on my Asus Win10 machine, but I don’t care much since I’m using a wireless keyboard and mouse. I was able to turn off the touchpad on my old Vista machine easily enough, so I know the problem.
BTW - the Spider Solitaire referred to in the other thread has a bug, sometimes crashing from a null pointer error when you CTL-Z to backtrack. It hasn’t happened to me yet using the menu for it.
Cool! Thanks for the tip!
None of the control panel mouse entries even mentions the touchpad. I even installed a program called touchpad-blocker and it also has no effect. I guess I will revert to Win 7, where I was able to block the touchpad This is driving me mad since I cannot type without brushing the damn touchpad.
There was one site that advised using the regedit, but I am not going there. The computer is Lenovo, if that matters.
This happened to me. I had to re-install vendor-specific drivers for my touchpad (Synaptics PS/2). Their software has the option for turning off the touchpad when a mouse is detected.
In your device manager, can you identify the model of the touchpad? (Start Menu -> type “device manager” -> select “Device Manager” -> under Mice and other pointing devices)
I recommend uninstalling whatever that touchpad blocker thing you installed is, too.
I agree that it’s the driver for your touchpad where you’ll find what you want. Mine has stayed disabled since I set it last year.
I can guess that one of the entries is the touchpad, since it is labeled as being made by the computer manufacturer. However the disable and uninstall options are grayed out.
My new laptop is light and relatively small, which is good, but the screen and keyboard are also small, and a pain to use. Like the one I have at work, I use an external monitor and keyboard, and so have no trouble with the touchpad. If you do any reasonable amount of work at a desk, I recommend it.
Believe it or not I had tried all that. The disable box was grayed out and clicking on it accomplished exactly nothing.
Eventually, I got that touchpad blocker to work. I misunderstood “on” and “off” to refer to the blocker, but it actually refers to the touchpad. Interestingly, there is a pointing stick and that still works. So far, problem apparently solved.