My Dell laptop has a touchpad, that's driving me crazy. It's super- sensitive, so everytime my palm brushes over it while I type, the cursor jumps. I've downloaded the Synaptics driver for the pointing device, and installed it. However, when I start the program, it only shows me stuff for my mouse, not my touchpad. Is there any way I can disable the touchpad? (Would have posted this in the Short Questions item, but couldn't find it readily)12 responses total.
I've seen some people just tape a piece of cardstock over the touchpad and then use an external mouse. Disabling the touchpad is probably possible in the BIOS.
you mean hit F1 when I'm booting up, and fiddling around with the options? I hadn't thought of that. But anyhow, I was looking for a solution that I could switch between, because I do use the touchpad sometimes when I need the laptop for 5 minutes or so, and don't want to hook up stuff.
I installed a Synaptics driver for one of the machines at work that had a lot of touchpad sensitivity settings. It also had a feature that let you disable the touchpad whenever there are keystrokes, to avoid the 'palm on the touchpad' problem. If your driver doesn't have these options, you might want to make sure you got the right one. I got at all these features by right-clicking the little touchpad icon in the system tray.
I installed the Synaptics driver, and right clicked the icon in the tray. Got all the settings for my mouse, but none for the touchpad. For some reason, it doesn't recognise the touchpad. Any suggestions?
Hmm. That's very odd. I'm not really sure what to suggest, since it "just worked" on the machine I set up.
It's worked on my colleague's machine. I'm thinking my touchapd isn't compatible with synaptics. Any others I can use?
If you can find out who made the touchpad, they may have a driver for it. But the Dells I've seen all came with the Synaptics drivers.
I was fiddling with my Dell Inspiron 3800. I seem to have disconnected the touchpad when I opened the laptop. Can anyone tell me what exactly should I check to get it back working?? I mean what should go into what so its starts working?
First, make sure it's not disabled in the BIOS. There's a setting there to turn it off. The Synaptics driver also can be set to disable the touchpad, pointing stick, or both, so check that, too. Otherwise, I'd start by removing the keyboard. If it's like the other Dells I've taken apart you do this by flipping it over, removing all the screws with a "K" next to them, then turning it back over and lifting out the keyboard. See if you can reach the ribbon connector from the touchpad. If you can, try unplugging it and then reseating it. They work loose easily.
My Synaptics driver can easily be turned on and off by clicking a little tray icon at the bottom of the screen. Maybe that got accidentally clicked?
I managed to disable my touchpad in the BIOS. I was a little apprehensive about doing this, because as I mentioned before, I do use the touchpad when I'm using my laptop for a 5 minute thing, and having to plug in the mouse would be a pain. However, the BIOS does have the option of disabling the touchpad when a PS/2 mouse is plugged in, and have it enabled otherwise.. exactly what I wanted. So my problem is fixed, and I'm a happy little camper. Thanks to whoever suggested the BIOS fix
I think some Dell computers use[d] the Alps touchpad.
You have several choices: