Hello,

Is it possible to temporarily disable the touchpad on my laptop? Most of the time I use a USB mouse and the palms of my hands keep hitting the touchpad. EXTREMELY annoying.

I have a Gateway Laptop - Model MX6440 and I'm running Windows XP Prof. I've tried and tried, but I don't see a way to do this.

Thanks in Advance

Have a look in MSCONFIG - Services(tab) - Checkmark "Hide all Microsoft".
Of the remaining items look for items related to touchpad.
Then experiment with disabling it or them (one at a time) until you get the one you want.

Best Regards

No luck with this... I tried disabling them and rebooting one by one.
Any other suggestions?

Try this, from:
http://support.gateway.com/s/Mobile/Gatewa.../5376faq8.shtml

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How do I change the touchpad settings on this notebook?

A: Follow these steps to change the touchpad settings on this notebook.

1. From the Start menu, click Control Panel. With Control Panel in Category View, click Printers and Other Hardware.

2. In the Printers and Other Hardware window, click the Mouse icon.

3. In the Mouse Properties dialog box, click the Device Settings tab, and then click Settings.

4. To modify a touchpad setting, click the + in front of the setting you want to change, and then modify the setting.

5. To save changes, click OK.

Check out this program NoTouchpad. It creates a hokey so you can toggle your touchpad on and off easily and instantly

http://www.NoTouchpad.com

A good chunck of notebooks have a button around the edge of the touchpad itself.

my girlfriend has the same laptop, and it doesn't have that button. worse is that neither of the solutions above is working, http://www.NoTouchpad.com doesn't have any effect at all. any other suggestions?

Try going to Control Panel > Mouse. Click on the Device Settings Tab, then from the List Box of devices select the one with "MousePad" or "TouchPad" in the title. Then click the Disable button and click OK.

been there, done that. but this laptop is the weirdest piece of technology i have ever seen because even if i disable that the thing that doesn't work is the usb mouse.

So there is only one Item in the list and it disables your USB mouse?

Try updating the mousepads drivers from the Gateway website:
http://support.gateway.com/support/drivers...sp?cmpid=topnav

Then restart the computer and go back to your device settings and try disabling it again.

there are two items there but both are doing the same thing, really weird they both disable the usb mouse.
i will try an update, thanks.

Try disabling it from the Hardware tab. Click on the device, then click Properties and go to the General Tab. There should be a drop down box at the bottom called "Device Usage", try setting it to "Do Not Use this Device (Disabled)". Try that after you install the driver though.

here's some information in the "For what it's worth" category.

I'm presently working on an older HP laptop nx9010.
It uses Synaptics TouchPad Software and Drivers as do many/most laptops.

I was unable to cause the desired effect with any of the above routines.

However, if a PS/2 mouse is connected to the machine, the touchpad is automatically disabled.


It is likely that the same will occur for most other Laptops.
The effect does not occur if a USB Mouse or USB-wireless Mouse is installed.

And of course, many newer Laptops don't come equiped with PS/2 connector.

Like I said in opening.... For what it's worth.

Doug

Is there a function key on your laptop? I know it sounds obvious but I had trouble with one of my computers touchpads not working. I realised instead of muting the sound I disabled the touchpad. On my laptop (which is an Acer) to enable/disable the touchpad I press the Fn key along with the F7 key which has an icon of a finger inside a box to represent the touchpad controls as shown here:
[attachment=3786:Touchpad.jpg]

This may help

Edited to remove advertisement link to competitive site offering paid services.
Please read my statement in the following post.
Doug

This post has been edited by Doug: Nov 20 2009, 12:45 AM