Vostro 3750 laptop, how to turn OFF the touchpad?

Hi Kengrome,

Welcome to the Community. I guess your talking about your touchpad. Trackstick is button in the middle of the keyboard used as trackstick. I think its an issue with your touchpad drivers. I dont know how it works on Ubuntu, but on Windows which I am aware off, uninstalling the existing touchpad drivers, reinstalling a new copy of it fixes this issue. I did some research and came up with this link if this is helpful.

help.ubuntu.com/.../SynapticsTouchpad

help.ubuntu.com/.../ShortcutKey

Hope this helps.

Thank you

Royan

Hi Royan, thanks for noting my faulty terminology, I have changed "trackpad" to "touchpad" in my original post.

Yes this is definitely a "known issue" with Vostro laptops and also with XPS laptops.  After I created this thread yesterday I was finally told by Dell that they have an Ubuntu tech support division,  I called them and the tech support guy immediately said this is a known issue with no apparent solution.  He said Vostro and XPS laptops both use the same touchpad, its driver has never worked right, the latest version of this driver makes things even worse and he knows of no way to fix this problem on Ubuntu.

I just ran "cat /proc/bus/input/devices" as suggested in the first link you gave me, and the result contains this:

I: Bus=0011 Vendor=0002 Product=0005 Version=7326

N: Name="ImPS/2 ALPS GlidePoint"

P: Phys=isa0060/serio1/input0

S: Sysfs=/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input9

U: Uniq=

H: Handlers=mouse1 event9

B: PROP=0

B: EV=7

B: KEY=70000 0 0 0 0

B: REL=103

... so perhaps I'll be able to figure out how to disable this touchpad yet.  

Nevertheless the solution posted on those two web pages is time consuming and technically complex for the average computer user.  I'm a programmer but I'm not sure it's going to work for me either since the instructions apply to a much older version of Ubuntu than the one I'm using.  All I can do is try, hope for the best, and see what happens.

If I fail to get this touchpad turned off via software I'm just going to return the computer and buy one from a different manufacturer.  I never had any problem turning off the touchpad on my two year old Toshiba laptop.  I did it so long ago that I don't even remember how I did it, but I probably just switched it off in the BIOS.  Yet this is impossible in Dell's BIOS because it doesn't even offer touchpad control ... :(

Wish this was a solution that regular non-advanced users could apply. So frustrating.

The simple and more elegant solution is to install a patch to have the touchpad seen as such, not as a mouse. Read here how to do it.

Install the *.deb, restart and go to System settings> Mouse and Touchpad > [click the new] Touchpad tab > tick the "Disable touchpad while typing".

On the other hand, on my V3750 with ubuntu 11.10,  Fn+F3 turns the  touchpad On/Off out of the box no problems.

The simple and more elegant solution is to install a patch to have the touchpad seen as such, not as a mouse. Read here how to do it. Install the *.deb, restart and go to System settings> Mouse and Touchpad > [click the new] Touchpad tab > tick the "Disable touchpad while typing". On the other hand, on my V3750 with ubuntu 11.10,  Fn+F3 turns the  touchpad On/Off out of the box no problems.

⎡ Virtual core pointer                    	id=2	[master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer              	id=4	[slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ DualPoint Stick                         	id=11	[slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ AlpsPS/2 ALPS DualPoint TouchPad        	id=12	[slave  pointer  (2)]

And you can now disable the touchpad with:

xinput set-prop 12 "Device Enabled" 0

Also, if you feel comfortable with a screwdriver, you can always try and unplug the touchpad altogether if it's separate from the Accupoint on your system and if this is something you want to do, but I prefer software.