Dell Touchpad - How do I disable?

The official touchpad drivers have a setting to disable the pad when an externarl input device is plugged in.

If you want to disable the touchpad without using an external input device, or if you use a bluetooth mouse (which the touchpad drivers do not detect as an external device) then I believe there is a setting in the BIOS to disable any and all of the built-in peripherals on the computer.

Welcome to the forums :emotion-21:

First of all, you MUST have the official Synaptics Touchpad drivers from the Dell website installed, else the 'Dell Touchpad' tab will not show in the mouse configuration window.

Once the drivers are installed, open Control Panel --> Mouse --> Dell Touchpad.
Click on the large screen with an arrow, which will open the touchpad configuration window.
Click on 'Device Select', and right at the bottom is a box which you can tick to 'Disable Touchpad/Pointing Stick when a USB mouse is connected.
As soon as you tick that option, a message will pop up in the taskbar, confirming your selection.

You can make doubly sure however, by also choosing 'Disable' under the Touchpad' heading in the same window.

Be sure to click 'Apply' once you've made your selections :emotion-5:

Hi,

My touchpad has a driver from Alps Electric and says it is plugged into PS/2 mouse port.

I can not find on the Dell website Synaptic Touchpad drivers fro the xps M1530 computer with Windows Vista.

Does that make a difference?

I downloaded the driver from the Synaptics website and so far so good. I was able to disable the the touchpad.  It took the place of the existing driver.

Why wasn't this driver available for the M1530 through Dell?:emotion-40: 

I don't have any options to disable while using an external device.  I have a external wireless mouse and cannot figure out how to disable the touchpad while I have the wireless mouse connected to my laptop.