If you have a laptop, you may be able to disable the touchpad. This is a convenient feature if you don’t want to use the touchpad on your laptop. To disable the touchpad, follow these steps:

  1. Open the lid of your laptop and remove any screws that hold it in place.
  2. Lift the laptop off its stand and place it on your lap or desk so that it’s open.
  3. Place your fingers over the edge of the touchpad and lift them away from the computer screen so that they’re out of reach.
  4. Close the lid of your laptop and replace any screws that were removed earlier.
  5. Turn on your computer and wait until it starts up automatically (this may take a few minutes).
  6. When your computer starts up, type “touchpad” into the search bar and hit enter. You should now see a list of devices under “TouchPad.” If there are none, type “0” into the search bar and hit enter again to return to normal operations (assuming you left all other devices enabled).

A touchpad can be extremely useful for most people, but there are times when it is little more than an irritation, so how do you permanently disable a touchpad if you do not want or need it? Today’s SuperUser Q&A post has the answers to help a frustrated reader.

Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites.

Photo courtesy of Anonymous Account (Flickr).

The Question

SuperUser reader toriloukas wants to know how to permanently disable the touchpad on a laptop:

What is the best (or easiest) way to permanently disable the touchpad on a laptop?

The Answer

SuperUser contributors Steven and Scott have the answer for us. First up, Steven:

Followed by the answer from Scott:

The touchpad can often be disabled in BIOS. On my Dell Latitude E6430s, the option is POST Behavior > Mouse/Touchpad. There is even an option to disable the touchpad only if an external mouse is attached.

Approach 2 – Device Manager

Open the Control Panel, then go to System > Device Manager. Navigate to the Mouse Option, right click on it, and click Disable.

Approach 3 – Physically Disconnect

According to a disassembly video (link shown below), it appears that you can unplug the touchpad by removing the keyboard (at 3:45) and removing the small ribbon cable near the touchpad.

Disassembling the Dell Inspiron N5050 [YouTube]

Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the comments. Want to read more answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? Check out the full discussion thread here.

I disabled my touchpad there and it has remained disabled through many reboots.