#*%$@ Laptop mouse pad!! How do you turn it off??

I dont even remember what I was doing in March 2004. Wait....I was still in college just as I am now. Will I ever get out?

Garth-

This is probably way to late to help you, but if it saves just one life...

I think I have the same Phoenix BIOS, so that's not the answer. I went to Mouse and Other pointing devices in the Hardware Manager. For the external mouse (you can dermine which it is by right clicking and in the general tab it says either usb (external) or something else) you can disable the external mouse. For the other listed - P/S 2 compatible - in my case the option to disable this mouse was greyed out. No problem. I uninstalled it completely. Yeah, I may need it someday, but I can live with that. I like the fact that is is dead and gone.

I'm not sure why the option to disable it was greyed out. That may not always be the case.

-HandsOff

I can't believe this is still going on. If he hasn't solve his dilema by now he should've took a hammer to it. 2 year 2+ month.

IanD wrote in post #173468
Garth,
Look in the Control panel under Mouse. Click on Device settings. Your Touchpad should show up there in the Devices listing. High light the device, now you should be able to click on the Disable button. If for some reason it is not listed there, Contol Panel/System/Device Manager scroll down to Moue and Other pointing Devices. Click to expand and your touchpad should be in there. If it is not then you do not have one
From there you *could* uninstall the drivers but then if you wanted the pad later you might be stuck finding them. Most laptops have a *Hot* key to press to turn on and off the pad. Mine is "Fn*F7*

My Gateway has a setting in the Touchpad controls that is called "Palm Check". This enables me to adjust the sensitivity of the pad so my hand doesn't cause the cusor to move where I don't whan tit when I'm typing.

Ian, you might double check the function of that "FnF7" key on your computer. On mine, it doesn't lock the touch pad. Since laptops don't have separate number key pads like aregular keyboard, the "Pad Lock" function allows me to use an alternate set of keys as number keys, instead of the ones across the top row of keys.

Hey, I know this thread is still going on (for what seems like 3 years apparently) and I had the same problem recently since I bought a Macbook Pro. OS X has a nice option whereby if you plug in an external mouse, it automatically disables the trackpad so your palms don't mess things up for you. However, since I also run Windows on it, and I haven't found a similar option in Windows, I'm stuck in the same boat.

Like others mentioned, you can go into the Control Panel and manually disable it, but if you remove the mouse, you're out of luck... now you can't move the cursor until you plug it back in. Plus, I think it's a bit of a pain to have to go to the Control Panel all the time to disable and enable it.

I'm lazy.

So lazy, in fact, I wrote a small utility that can help you quickly enable and disable the trackpad. It runs in the tray and you can right click it for options, or you can hit CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-M to switch between enabling and disabling the trackpad.

Check it out here. It's very early still, and it's designed for the Macbook Pro, but I added options to let you select which one to disable and enable.

Constructive feedback and bugs/issues with how you found one are welcome.

Have you tried to download an updated driver??

Here’s what I did. This explanation may seem elementary – but it got me there.

1. Go to Gateway support:

Gateway Support Drivers/dlcenter.asp?c​mpid=headerlink ) --------- * I think !

2. Go down to the 3rd selection (i.e. ‘Gateway Support Drivers & Downloads’)

3. Then off to the right of the page, there’s a small box titled (‘Diver & Download Search’), where you type in your ‘model number’ and the word ‘touchpad’ and select ‘GO’.
* As an example I typed ------ 6510GZ touchpad --------------- that’s it.


3. This should take you to a hyperlink that gives you the download for the driver that your computer needs. Now after selecting the hyperlink, and going through the motions, --------- you’ll hopefully now be able to go to:

• Control Panel
  
• Mouse
  
• And ‘finally’, you’ll see a ‘new’ menu box – that ‘finally’ gives you the option to select a ‘Device Settings’ tab that allows you to ‘enable’ or ‘disable’ your touchpad.

Billllllll wrote in post #6517595
Have you tried to download an updated driver??

Since this thread is more than four years old, I'd bet the OP has probably upgraded to a whole new laptop by now.

thomascanty wrote in post #6521284
Since this thread is more than four years old, I'd bet the OP has probably upgraded to a whole new laptop by now.

hasn't posted for three years either - what's the bet all this good advice has fallen on deaf ears, so to speak...

joeseph wrote in post #6521364
hasn't posted for three years either - what's the bet all this good advice has fallen on deaf ears, so to speak...

More like no ears.

As I said elsewhere, you can tell Halloween is near because the dead are rising.