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6

I have Windows 8 (final, MSDN) on my Macbook Pro Retina.

Windows 8's ongoing, continuous tantrum of insisting that it's on a tablet device is causing it to always have a touch keyboard 'icon' on the taskbar.

The 'icon' is actually a toolbar and I can temporarily disable it by right clicking the taskbar and DE-selecting it. However, upon rebooting the system, it always insists on coming back and activating itself.

Windows 8 "Touch Keyboard" toolbar icon

How can I permanently disable the touch keyboard toolbar in the taskbar?

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1  
Disabling it from either location doesn't remove it permanently. It's a bug. It would seem that certain applications turn it back on. Chrome, from what I gather, seems to be one of those apps. I've already had to disable the touch keyboard at least a dozen times now. – Rob Oct 29 '12 at 15:22
1  
Exactly. The service is disabled for me. However, it is still present after a reboot – dgraziotin Dec 18 '12 at 9:21
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same issue i get, even with stopping and disabling said service. i should point out this happens on my win 8 virtual machine after every suspend/reboot cycle, it reappears upon the first mouse click anywhere within the vm. – Bobby S Jan 15 at 6:51
+1 for bombs... – Inisheer Mar 29 at 22:46

7 Answers

up vote 19 down vote

If you disable "Touch Keyboard and Handwriting Panel Service" it prevents it from coming back. Logging on via RDP always caused it to re-enable and it was annoying me to no end! Thank god its gone for good now.

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2  
FYI: open Run; type msconfig; hit enter; Services tab; un-tick 'Touch Keyboard and Handwriting Panel Service'; click OK. – c24w Dec 5 '12 at 10:06
3  
Weird, it turns it back on after a reboot. Ghost in the machine ... – Sid Dec 21 '12 at 23:04
I wish I could upvote this a dozen more times. – Michael Irigoyen Feb 11 at 22:57
up vote 8 down vote

Go through the following steps:

  1. Go to Manage --> Services and Application-->Services`.
  2. Double click on Touch Keyboard and Handwriting Panel Service.
  3. In Startup type .. .
  4. Click the small arrow and go to disabled.
  5. Click stop service.

Works fine for me and it doesn't come back after a reboot.

Here's a screenshot showing the details:

ss of details

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Please stop posting multiple answers and partial answers! Use the comments if you need help! – slm Jan 9 at 1:46
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@slm you are right about the multiple/partial answer's but user don't have enough privilege for comment everywhere but of course he can do it under his post. :) – avirk Jan 9 at 2:52
also, if you would like more control over your touch pad. (ie easy disable and change the sensitivity) just google for synaptics drivers and install those. – Hightower Jan 18 at 5:59
up vote 1 down vote

Right click on the taskbar, select Toolbars, deselect Touch Keyboard

Right click on the task bar -> properties -> toolbars and deselecting it sticks.

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Isn't that what they said they tried? – Joey Oct 27 '12 at 15:12
@Joey Yes, you're right. The Touch Keyboard icon seems to come back after I reboot .. though not consistently. Not sure when it decides to reappear, but it does. :/ Removing my upvote .. this isn't a permanent solution. – Chris W. Rea Oct 27 '12 at 18:43
@ChrisW.Rea - I think I worked out how to fix it, mind giving it a shot? Apparently I misremembered where I was supposed to turn off touch keyboard. – Journeyman Geek Oct 28 '12 at 10:44
up vote 1 down vote

The laptop I purchased had all the programs installed by user TrustedInstaller. When I shutdown the On-Screen Keyboard Taskbar by disabling the checkbox, it shutdown until I rebooted.

After investigation I found it to be a permissions issue. I was logged on as administrator and it was asking for permissions from TrustedInstaller. As administrator, I took ownership of all the folders on the root of the C: drive and all sub folders and set permissions to FULL.

After I rebooted, I unchecked the box that turns on the taskbar and it went away for good. I tested it thoroughly and found that if you enable the Use Mouse and Keyboard in the Ease Of Access in control panel, it will turn it back on and you have to turn it back off by right clicking the task bar and disabling the checkbox again. Just make sure the logged on user has permission to shut it down and it will stay off.

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Not really a good idea, there's a reason why these files don't have full permissions by default. – gronostaj Mar 26 at 17:54
up vote 1 down vote

I have this problem in VMware Virtual Machines only when coming back from sleep. Disabling the service doesn't work. The Touch Keyboard Toolbar reappears after coming out of sleep every time.

I thought deleting the service entirely would work but it didn't.

I finally got it to work but I'm not sure how. I updated Windows with all the latest updates including optional updates. But I also tried the answer above this. I used "Take Ownership" on all the main folders under c: and then rebooted and turned off the Touch Keyboard Toolbar. It didn't show up in the VM after coming back from sleep. So maybe that's what fixed it. It would be nice if someone found out specifically which folder needed full permissions because I'm not going to take full permissions of everything on a real machine.

Edit: I finally figured out the problem with VMware Workstation 9. I had the VMware USB 3.0 device installed in the Virtual Machine but I don't have USB 3 on the host. Either way, I downgraded the VM to USB 2.0 and I can now wake from sleep with no more Touch Keyboard Toolbar. I still think something is wrong with Windows because a USB 3.0 error should never trigger enabling a Toolbar. There are probably other things that set it off too.

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up vote 1 down vote

Personally, I just used the nuclear option of deleting the Touch Input Panel dll file. For me, this file is located at C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\ink\tipband.dll. Note that, first, you will have to take ownership of the file from TrustedInstaller using the Security tab in file properties. In addition, because explorer.exe loads the file when it starts up, I first had to terminate explorer.exe from the Task Manager, and then use an elevated command prompt to delete this file.

So far so good, and the touch keyboard taskbar toolbar hasn't appeared, even after multiple computer restarts!

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up vote 0 down vote

I wouldn't mess around with the above solutions of attempting to take ownership of all the system folders, as that may compromise system security.

For the following solution, read only the bold text for a TL;DR.

I had this same issue with my ASUS G75VW. Since you're also on a laptop, I'm willing to wager you have some sort of drivers installed for your touch pad, just as I did. It's likely that such drivers are the same ones you've had installed since you had Windows 7.

First, try attempting to uninstall your touch pad drivers via Control Panel (the driver might be listed as "Synaptics Touch Pad Driver"). If you can't find it there, press Win+X and attempt to locate it in Device Manager, potentially in the section where you might find input devices.

Then, restart your computer. After restarting, you'll see that touch services should no longer be invoked, and your tabs in Firefox should no longer be huge (that's one of the symptoms that I had on my computer, so I'm listing it here for search engine purposes). You can now proceed to update your touch pad drivers to the version compatible with Windows 8.

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