Quick Laptop Question

[derangedsheep]

I use an external mouse on my laptop. Is there any way to have the touchpad automatically turn itself off when an external mouse is plugged in? I hate touchpads and I especially hate when I accidentally brush over it in the middle of a CounterStrike firefight. I thought about going into the device manager and disabling it but I didn't know if there was maybe some hidden setting somewhere that makes it disable by itself.

Thanks,
Steve

[Aaron]

I don't think there is a way to automatically have it disable, though as you said you can disable it yourself.

Edit. Looks like I'm wrong, there is a way!

Start >> Control Panel >> Mouse

Then at the bottom, you'll see a checkbox that says "Disable Touch Pad when USB pointing device is present"

In case you didn't figure it out, you check that box, and click "OK"

[derangedsheep]

The aforementioned box does not exist in my mouse properties. :scratch:

[Aaron]

Really?

Ok, let's try this.

Start >> Control panel >> Mouse >> 'Tab' Device Select

So under the tab "Device Select," at the bottom, should be the checkbox.

[Aaron]

Dang, there's some cool shit you can play around with int here.

"Automatically move pointer to the default button in a dialog box"
"Show location of pointer when I press the CTRL key"

[DiggityBiggity]

Dang, there's some cool shit you can play around with int here.

"Automatically move pointer to the default button in a dialog box"
"Show location of pointer when I press the CTRL key"

Uhhm... that's so Windows 98 :lamer:

[Aaron]

I'm on XP, and didn't know about those things.

[zonyl]

I use an external mouse on my laptop. Is there any way to have the touchpad automatically turn itself off when an external mouse is plugged in? I hate touchpads and I especially hate when I accidentally brush over it in the middle of a CounterStrike firefight. I thought about going into the device manager and disabling it but I didn't know if there was maybe some hidden setting somewhere that makes it disable by itself.

Probably not what you are looking for, but you didnt say what OS

On my linux laptop I did this to play UT and Wolfenstein ET:

Create file: /etc/hotplug/usb/usbmouse.usermap:

Code: Select all

# el cheapo optical usb scroll mouse:  Find your usb id from cat /proc/usb/devices
usbmouse        0x03    0x09da  0x0006 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Create file: /etc/hotplug/usb/usbmouse:

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh

if test "$ACTION" = "add"  ; then
   synclient TouchpadOff 1
    if test -n "$REMOVER" ; then
        # usb.agent sets this variable to point to an executable that
        # will be run on remove, if it exists
        ln -s "$0" "$REMOVER"
    fi
elif test "$ACTION" = "remove" ; then
  synclient TouchpadOff 0
fi

--- or ---

You can install syndaemon and set it to disable the touchpad while typing (I set the delay to about 2 secs)

[Dirty Sanchez]

Mine just has a button above the touch pad to turn it on and off. I use a wireless mouse and keep the pad turned off.

[derangedsheep]

I'm using XP Pro so that Linux stuff won't work for me. I actually can't even disable the touchpad in the device manager. Next time I restart my computer (I usually just put it on standby as it never moves) I will poke around in the BIOS and see if there are any settings to turn it off in there.

[Kohburn]

mine has a function key to disable the touchpad just as easilly as dimming the screen etc

[derangedsheep]

There's nothing in the BIOS and no function keys to disable it. I just turned tapping off. I'll just deal with it.