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I have an Dell Inspiron 13-5378 laptop. I'd like to disable its touchpad since I have an external mouse I can use. I Googled for "disable touchpad" and have tried the following so far:

  • Going to Device Manager, selecting Mice and other pointing devices, and disabling both of the HID-compliant mouse entries I see

    • Disabling the first one appears to have no effect, as my touchscreen still works. Disabling the second one disables my mouse.
    • There is also a PS/2 Compatible Mouse entry, but I'm scared to touch it because I can only uninstall, not disable it, and I don't know what it does because I only have 1 mouse plugged in.

  • Running main.cpl to get to Mouse Properties, going to Hardware > Properties > Change settings... yields the same issues: I can disable the first 2 "HID-compliant mouses" but can only uninstall the last one.

Any suggestions on what to do?

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  • The simple way to disable any touchpad is to uninstall and delete the device driver – Ramhound Feb 26 '17 at 2:56
  • Unless your mouse you have plugged in is a PS/2 mouse you should uninstall the ps/2 device – Ramhound Feb 26 '17 at 3:06
  • @Ramhound I just uninstalled the PS/2 driver and my touchpad still works... – James Ko Feb 26 '17 at 3:52
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Wow-- after an hour so of digging around online and not getting anywhere (and uninstalling drivers), the problem turned out to be unexpectedly simple when I attempted it myself.

I have Windows 10, so I went to Settings > searched "mouse and touchpad". There, you'll find 2 toggle buttons: One for turning the touchpad off, one for turning the touchpad off when a mouse is plugged in.

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