How to disable Inspiron 1525 touchpad under Windows-7

Thanks so much for this!!  I upgraded mine eons ago and when I did, I couldn't find the correct driver.  I've been using my laptop much more lately for coding and get frustrated because I inadvertantly swipe the palm of my hand on the pad and it takes me to a different place and messes it all up!!  I actually am running x64, so I went straight to www.synaptics.com/support/drivers to find the one that works for my OS.

Appreciate it!

Didn't work for me. The disable box does not highlight. I could "uninstall" but don't know the consequences.

Yesterday I installed Windows-7 on my Inspiron 1525 laptop.  I was previously running Windows Vista and the Vista-driver for the touchpad had the intelligence to detect the fact that I have a USB wireless-mouse (Kensington brand) and so it disabled the touchpad each time I booted the PC. But under Windows-7 the touchpad was staying active. I didn't want it to be active since that was causing problems when I inadvertently touched the touchpad as I was typing. I went to the Synaptics website, went to the downloads section, and I downloaded a driver named: Synaptics_v14_0_3_C_XP32_Vista32_Win7-32_Signed_default.exe I used Windows Explorer to access my downloads folder and I double clicked on the above .exe file to run it.  That replaced the Microsoft-supplied driver for the touchpad with the Synaptics-supplied driver. The touchpad mouse control worked just fine with the new Synaptics driver. Then I clicked Start,   Control Panel,   Mouse,   and selected the  Device Settings tab.  That tab displays the settings for the Touchpad.  It has a "disable" option, so I clicked on that.  Then the touchpad was entirely disabled.   If I ever wish to enable it again, I can navigate to the same place and click on the "Enable" button. So now my laptop is running under Windows-7 with the touchpad disabled and I use my USB wireless-mouse as my only mouse.

I finally got my Dell laptop inspiron 1525, to disable the touchpad after installing Windows 7. As stated above, you do have to update the driver first at the site support.dell.com   You need to get in to the right area by stating what your laptop model is and need the Service Tag number so that the site gives you exactly what you need for your model to download the correct driver for your touchpad.  It didn't even show an option for Win 7, so I left it at Vista. Doing this makes the touchpad option clickable, instead of shadowed out.   Then, go here for the EXACT directions that were easy:  http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/kcs/document?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&docid=DSN_361927&isLegacy=true  If the link doesn't work, it's issue #5, about 2/3rds the way down on the page for troubleshooting Touchpad issues.  Just follow Issue 5, it's different than what others have stated what to do above here, like you said the box didn't highlight before.  But, this takes you another way with another box to make the choices from.  It worked for me today, June 16, 2011.  Hope you find what you need. 

Thank u 4 this useful info.