How to disable Dell Inspiron 1545 touchpad operate with Ubuntu 10.04?

Question

The mousepad or touchpad in Dell Inspiron 1545 drive me crazy. It moved to other places unexpectedly. I took me more time to retype password or rewrite my programs, my documents.

I'm using Ubuntu 10.04. Tried install gpointing-device-settings but it was not work. It did not recognize the touchpad.

Answer 1

Try synclient TouchpadOff=1

I wrote an ON/OFF script some time ago, more details here.

Answer 2

From this thread, based on this article :

First edit your xorg configuration file:

1. Alt+F2
2. Type gksu gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf
3. Find the line that says Section InputDevice
4. Under that section add a line that reads: Option "SHMConfig" "on"
5. Save and close that file

Now to turn it off:

1. Alt+F2
2. Type "synclient touchpadoff=1"
3. Hit enter and you're done

To turn it back on:

1. Alt+F2
2. Type "synclient touchpadoff=0"
3. Hit enter and you're done

Answer 3

I finally found a solution to the infamous problem of not being able to disable the Inspiron's touch pad after I upgraded from Vista to Win7 32bit.

I had to install an older touchpad driver to make this work. The driver is Dell R165804, this driver is labeled "Dell Touchpad Driver for XP/2K and Vista 32" when I installed it in my Inspiron 1545 it added the Dell Touchpad tab to my mouse settings under the control panel. Then I opened the control panel, clicked "mouse", under the Touch Pad tab click on the picture of the touch pad. I was then able to click "Device Select" and check the box that says "Disable Touchpad when external USB device is present".

Now when the USB mouse is attached the touchpad is disabled and I don't have my cursor jumping around while typing due to my fat thumbs touching the mouse pad.

Hope this helps someone else out there!