Trying to disable touchpad on e1705

I'm running with vista 32. I've read everything here on disabling the touchpad so that a usb wired mouse will cause it to be toggled off. I know that sometime in the distant past I have seen where this could be done, but I can't find it now.

When I go to the mouse on the control panel I don't get any way to disable the touchpad. I tried installing all of the other drivers mentioned here but none of them worked so I've gone back to the generic ps/2 driver that the computer uses as a default.

This moving around of the cursor is driving me nuts and I want to get rid of it! My MS comfort optical mouse 3000 works perfectly - I just want to turn this touchpad off when I use it!

TIA,

Susan

 

You have to install the dell drivers for the touchpad from dell's site. once you have done that, the option will be there.

 

Is that the synaptics touchpad driver? I tried that but will do it again.

Thanks for the reply,

Susan

 

I installed the synaptics driver again and I still don't get any touchpad options. Under mouse - hardware it still says ps/2 compatible mouse. What am I doing wrong??
Susan

 

Thanks YoJr. I persevered and finally got the synaptic driver installed AND setup. It's now working great!

Susan

 

New guy here......

I'd just like to thank the people who typed this thread. I have been wanting to disable my touch pad (as it screws up my typing by me accidentally hitting it all the time) but could never figure out how. but thanks to this thread it told me all the info I needed, thank you!

 

You know what? I disabled mine when I first got it, then my bluetooth mouse went nuts and I went through H-E-DoubleToothpicks to get everything back up. You can set the sensitivity very high and you won't have the problem with accidental engagement while typing. Just a thought.

 

Not to sound sarcastic, but why couldn't you simply have connected a normal USB mouse to the laptop to get everything back up??

 

Uh, because I ain't gots won up my rear end at da moment? Duh!