How to enable and disable the touchpad on a laptop

Now lap­top man­u­fac­tur­ers are try­ing to do every­thing to make it con­ve­nient to work on a mobile com­put­er in any sit­u­a­tion. And for this they equip them with very large and sen­si­tive touch­pads. On the one hand, it’s real­ly con­ve­nient — you don’t have to “aim” at the tiny touch­pad or dri­ve on it with one hand while press­ing the mouse but­tons with the oth­er.

On the oth­er hand, often the touch­pad is too sen­si­tive. And it inter­feres with work, espe­cial­ly asso­ci­at­ed with typ­ing a large amount of text. Acci­den­tal touch­es not only twitch the cur­sor, but can also lead to unnec­es­sary, annoy­ing, and some­times harm­ful clicks. And in this case, it is bet­ter to dis­able the touch­pad.

We fig­ure out how to enable and dis­able the touch­pad on a lap­top.

How to enable and disable the touchpad on a laptop with function keys

The vast major­i­ty of mobile com­put­ers sup­port enabling and dis­abling the touch­pad with a spe­cial com­bi­na­tion of func­tion keys. It remains the case for small things — to find these very but­tons on the key­board.

Instruc­tion:

1. Look for the but­ton on your key­board marked with a crossed-out touch­pad icon. It can be “Space”, F9 or some oth­er key in the F row, and in prin­ci­ple any key;

2. Find the Fn but­ton. In the vast major­i­ty of cas­es, it is locat­ed in the low­er left cor­ner of the key­board, between Ctrl and Win­dows;

3. Press the keys found in points 1 and 2 at the same time.

4. Check. The touch­pad must be dis­abled. Press these two keys at the same time to turn it on again.

It is worth not­ing that not all com­put­ers “remem­ber” the select­ed touch­pad oper­a­tion mode upon reboot. After turn­ing it on, check the touch­pad — if it is active, dis­able it (if nec­es­sary, of course).

If you did not find the shut­down but­tons on the key­board — this is often the case on HP lap­tops, for exam­ple — then care­ful­ly inspect the touch­pad. If she has a small recess in one of the cor­ners — this is the on / off but­ton. Dou­ble-tap it and the touch­pad will turn off. Dou­ble tap again and it will turn on.

How to enable and disable the touchpad on a laptop if it is manufactured by Synaptics

No need to guess if you have a Synap­tics touch­pad or not. The vast major­i­ty of such com­po­nents are man­u­fac­tured by this com­pa­ny. They are installed in both expen­sive and bud­get lap­tops.

There is an easy way to check. Open the tray by press­ing the up arrow but­ton in the low­er right cor­ner of the screen, near the clock. See the red square icon or the touch­pad icon there? If yes, then it is pro­duced by Synap­tics.

Instruc­tion:

1. Dou­ble click on this icon;

2. In the win­dow that opens, go to the “Device Set­tings” tab;

3. Click the “Turn off” but­ton.

4. When you need to turn the touch pan­el back on, repeat the same steps, only in step 3, click “Enable”.

How­ev­er, there are a cou­ple of “buts”. First, the icon may be hid­den. Then you need to open the “Con­trol Pan­el”, there “Hard­ware and Sound”, and already there, under the inscrip­tion “Devices and Print­ers”, click on the link “Mouse”. And then you can use the above instruc­tions.

Sec­ond­ly, the “Turn off” but­ton from point 3 may not be. This means deep sys­tem inte­gra­tion of the device. And then you will either have to revise the key­board again, or dis­able the com­po­nent through the BIOS.

How to enable and disable the touchpad on a laptop through the BIOS

The most reli­able option that dis­ables the touch­pad for any oper­at­ing sys­tems. But it is also one of the most dif­fi­cult. More­over, the max­i­mum dif­fi­cul­ty lies in the fact that you need to enter the BIOS some­how.

There are two ways to enter the BIOS on a lap­top — through a spe­cial key or through the “debug reboot” mode in Win­dows 10.

How to enter the BIOS on a lap­top with “but­tons”:

1. Turn off your lap­top com­plete­ly. Reboot and hiber­na­tion do not work;

2. Press the pow­er but­ton and imme­di­ate­ly start press­ing F2.

3. Instead of a white and blue table, do you see the oper­at­ing sys­tem load­ing? Well, it means that not F2 is used to enter the BIOS, but some oth­er key. The most com­mon­ly used are Esc, F8 and Del, but some­times F1, F3, F9, F11 and F12 are also used. Try them all!

How to enter the BIOS on a lap­top with Win­dows 10:

1. Open the Start menu;

2. Press the Shift key on your key­board and don’t release it yet;

3. Start reboot and release the Shift key;

4. On the screen that appears, click “Trou­bleshoot”;

5. Then select “Advanced options”;

6. And on the next screen — “UEFI Firmware Set­tings”.

7. Every­thing. Your com­put­er will boot into the BIOS. You should see a white and blue table. If instead of it there are some big ani­mat­ed icons, then most like­ly you have an Asus moth­er­board, they like to do this. Some­where in the low­er right cor­ner of the screen there will be an inscrip­tion Advanced, click on it.

And if the but­tons are large and not ani­mat­ed, then per­haps we are talk­ing about a stripped-down BIOS of some hybrid com­put­ers. There’s noth­ing to be done here.

Now you can dis­able the touch­pad.

Instruc­tion:

1. Using the arrow keys on your key­board, nav­i­gate to the Advanced tab. In most cas­es, this is enough to press the right arrow key once;

2. Use the arrow keys to select Inter­nal Point­ing Device. Often just press­ing the down arrow a few times is suf­fi­cient;

3. Press Enter. Inscrip­tion [Enabled] next to Inter­nal Point­ing Device should change to [Dis­abled];

4. Press F10 and then Enter to con­firm the set­tings.

Every­thing. The touch­pad is dis­abled. It’s bet­ter not to “fum­ble” more on the BIOS set­tings, because you can dam­age the lap­top. If you need to enable the touch­pad, use the above instruc­tions again, just change the switch next to the Inter­nal Point­ing Device item from [Dis­abled] on the [Enabled].

What to do if these methods do not help?

If you have tried all the options to enable the touch­pad, but it still does not work, then update the dri­vers for it (by down­load­ing from the offi­cial web­site of the lap­top man­u­fac­tur­er).

Also if the risk is that it’s just bro­ken. For repairs, you will have to take the lap­top to a ser­vice cen­ter.

How to enable and disable the touchpad on a laptop physically

The most car­di­nal way, which requires the abil­i­ty to dis­as­sem­ble and assem­ble a lap­top with­out break­ing it. It involves com­plete­ly dis­abling the touch­pad by dis­con­nect­ing it from the moth­er­board.

Atten­tion! All fur­ther actions are con­sid­ered unau­tho­rized ser­vice inter­ven­tion and will void the war­ran­ty. In addi­tion, they can dam­age the lap­top up to a com­plete loss of per­for­mance. Be care­ful, and at the slight­est uncer­tain­ty in your actions, it is bet­ter to give up the idea of ​​mak­ing such an inter­ven­tion.

Instruc­tion:

1. Search the Inter­net for instruc­tions on dis­as­sem­bling your lap­top. Your task is to find out how the key­board is removed and whether it is nec­es­sary to unscrew the fix­ing bolts or sim­ply to wring out the plas­tic fas­ten­ers;

2. Remove the key­board. It is not nec­es­sary to turn it off;

3. Locate the cable that runs from the touch­pad to the moth­er­board;

4. Gen­tly pry­ing off the black (or vice ver­sa, white) part of the mount, snap it off;

5. Pull out the touch pan­el cable;

6. Snap the cable fas­ten­er, put the key­board in place, assem­ble the device back.

7. Every­thing. The touch­pad is dis­abled deeply and secure­ly. Now, to turn it on, you will need to dis­as­sem­ble it again and con­nect the cable to the key­board.

The author of this mate­r­i­al resort­ed to this method when it was nec­es­sary to restore the min­i­mum per­for­mance of a PC filled with cof­fee. The touch­pad “caught” phan­tom clicks. At the same time, it was not dis­abled either pro­gram­mat­i­cal­ly or in the BIOS (there was sim­ply no Inter­nal Point­ing Device item). I had to unplug it from the moth­er­board.

But, nev­er­the­less, it is not rec­om­mend­ed to use this method. All these dis­as­sem­blies and assem­blies with inac­cu­rate inter­ven­tion can lead to seri­ous dam­age.