Can’t Disable Touchpad

.Dear Computer Lady,

My problem is with the touchpad on my laptop. I’ve had this Dell Latitude D350 laptop for 6 years and had been running Windows XP. When I upgraded to Windows 7 a couple months ago I realized my touchpad was still functioning even though I use a wireless mouse.

I have tried all sorts of maneuvers to disable it – and it just prefers to stick with me. Can you tell me how to do that? I keep bumping it with my thumb pads while I’m typing and then my cursor jumps to someplace else in my document!! Very annoying.

Thank you for any help – Nancy

Dear Nancy,

When you upgraded to Windows 7, you probably lost the drivers for your touchpad, and also the drivers for any keyboard shortcut that might turn the touchpad off.

You might be able to find touchpad drivers on Dell’s website for your computer, but given the age of your computer, they are probably not available. (the average computer lasts 4 to 5 years).

Sometimes, there is a setting in the Control Panel to disable the touchpad, but this is usually dependent on any drivers you would have installed.

The best answer I can give you is the old fashioned low-tech one. Grab an old rewards card, or cut out a piece of a cereal box to cover your touchpad. Tape it to your laptop on one side so that you can flip it over your touchpad when you are typing, and flip it up if you ever want to use the touchpad.

Elizabeth

 

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Elizabeth Boston is a Web designer, Social Media Consultant and managing editor of, “Ask The Computer Lady”.
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Comments (3)

  1. sj_kac

    November 30, 2014 at 12:45 am

    I have a Dell Inspiron laptop and on the top row next to the function buttons is a button to enable/disable the keypad. When I am typing on the keyboard I usually disable the keypad so my hand does not move the cursor by accident. Click the up arrow on the notification bar at the bottom of the screen to see the icon for the keypad.

  2. Phily

    November 28, 2014 at 7:33 am

    On my laptop, I installed a small program called
    “TouchFreeze”. It automatically turns off the touchpad while you are typing something. After you stop typing, it turns the touchpad back on.

  3. Compunut

    November 28, 2014 at 7:23 am

    usually you can go to dell and download the Synaptics Touchpad drivers. This will get you the touchpad controls back.