i have a dell latitude. there are two “things” on the keypad that function as a mouse. one is a small purple nob stuck between the keys G H and B. the other is a touch pad about 1 and a half inches big that is located under the space bar. i want to turn the touch pad off. when i type, sometimes my palm hits it and screws everything up. i looked in the control panel under mouse but saw nothing there that would let me turn off the touch pad. am i out of luck? is it even possible to turn off the touch pad? please help.
Interesting… I’ve never seen a machine with a nipple and a touchpad.
My suggestion would be to open the device manager (Control Panel>System>Hardware>Device Manager) and see if there’s something specific listed under Human Interface Devices that can be disabled.
Interestingly, the category is called ‘Human interface devices’ on one of my machines and ‘Mice and other pointing devices’ on another - same Windows version and everything. <shrug>
Is there perhaps a small button/bar near the top frame of the touchpad? I have had 2 HPs and each of them have a small clicky thing to turn off the touch pad.
Personally I DETEST touchpads with a loathing that burns with the fires of hell. I would love to have a small lidded box in place of the whole touch pad assembly that is sized to hold one of those really tiny laptop micromouses.
it’s a dell latitude c540/c640. at least that’s what it says on the bottom. i got it used and didn’t have that much of a need for it until my desk top went kaput. now it’s my primary computer and that damn touch pad it driving me crazy!!!
there doesnt appear to be any button that turns off the touch pad. next to the power button there is a small button with a lower case i on it. i press that and nothing happens.
did this and didn’t see anything. there does appear to be a driver for an externial mouse though. i didn’t mess with it.
It’s quite common – most Dells have them and so does my daughter’s Toshiba. Lets you choose the device you prefer.
“Nipple,” huh? That’s a much less x-rated bit of anatomy than what I’ve heard it called.
You won’t find a button to turn it off. I deal with the hardware, not software, but I recently had a customer whose joystick was acting erratic. I believe that he disabled it somewhere in the control panel without disabling the touchpad, so doing the opposite should be possible.
Another option would be to go to the BIOS (press F2 after you first turn on the PC) and look under Integrated Devices for something to disable. But I’d look in Control Panel for a solution first.
Sorry I can’t help more.
i can’t beleave that dell would make two devices that do the same thing and not have an option to turn one of them off while still using the other one.
A really crude solution would be to cut a square of thin plastic (say, acetate transparency film) just the right size to pop into place on top of the touch pad. I’d have a look in the BIOS first though, as Rucksinator suggests.
I just tried putting plastic over my touchpad and it still works - does anyone know what kind of sensor technology they use? I thought it was resistive.
I have a Dell Inspiron. As well as being able to adjust mouse sensitivity in the control panel, on the bottom right is the touchpad’s own software. In one of the tabs (I’m on a desktop now, or I’d tell you which one), there’s a check-box with a setting called “Big Dumb Fat Fingers” I have it set, and it keeps your palms from activating it (I think it can tell when the area under pressure is larger than expected from a finger. WAG is a piezeoelectric (sp?) pressure sensor, because I can also turn down the pressure sensitivity. If you turn that down also, it might help, and keep the plastic there, it’ll help spread the force a bit. Hope this helps!
Load the appropriate ALPS Touchpad driver and you will then be able to toggle any of your pointing devices on/off using the mouse properties icon from your control panel.
I found these Instructions for your dell (PDF) I think it was page 6 that tells you how to turn off the thouchpad.
Ugh, touchpads. I won’t by a laptop unless it has the little eraserhead mouse.
And it has the added benefit of keeping other people off my computer. No one’ll touch cuz no one can figure out how to move the mouse around.
BTW I have a thinkpad and had the same problem. To turn mine off I had to do it through a Thinkpad configuration utility.
i don’t know which one was the appropriate driver, so i downloaded the latest one from dell. Unfortunately there’s no option to turn off the touch pad after i loaded the driver. i’ll go back and try another driver.
It’s pressure sensitive. On some of the older Dells around the office, the case has warped just enough to put continuous pressure on the touchpad if your hands are against the keyboard at all, making the mouse float down and left all the time. My Fujitsu laptop has a function key that turns off the touchpad, but I’m pretty sure the Dell has no such thing. I’d second the vote to try the control panel first, and then the BIOS. If all else fails (and I would really not recommend this), I suppose you could get under the keyboard and physically disconnect the touchpad.
I cover my Dell touchpad with a piece of index card trimmed to size. That’s easy to do. Otherwise, sporadic mouse movements occur sometimes when I’m using the keyboard. I don’t particularly like the rubbery thing either, but it’s non-intrusive.
I’m pretty sure that this won’t work. Unplugging the palmrest connector from the motherboard will disable the palmrest and both sets of buttons, (as well as any other buttons/controls/sensors, etc on the palmrest). I don’t think that there’s anyway to do this without disabling the left and right click buttons, and that would make the joystick pretty much useless.
It can’t be as simple as that - I can’t seem to operate my touchpad with anything except parts of my body. Plastic objects like pens don’t do it - softer things like the corner of my leather phone case or wallet don’t do it, metal objects don’t do it. Fingers do. Hmmm…