Disable the touchscreen for a Windows 8 laptop?

Anonymous
2012-11-06T23:19:41+00:00

I have a Dell XPS L702x notorious for having ghost clicking issues, where the touchscreen randomly "clicks" on arbitrary areas of the screen (mine seems to be in the lower right hand corner, often minimizing all my open windows or opening the calendar), and through the upgrade to Windows 8 it seems as though an old N-Trig driver went missing which let me disable the touchscreen. Now I have no way to turn off the touchscreen, and while Google has suggested unclicking "User your finger as an input device" under Pen and Touch, I don't even have that checkbox available to un-click!

So: How can I disable the touchscreen on my laptop or is there a program that can do that for me? I am uninterested in actually using the touchscreen -- I'm more worried about being able to functionally use my laptop without sporadic clicks on my screen.

Thanks.

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Search, touch, and mouse

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Anonymous
2012-11-09T03:00:43+00:00

I had the same problem with my wife's XPS 17.    I needed to restore basic functionality so disabling the touch screen was acceptable.     However, unlike Vikin (but like you) I didn't have the "Use your finger as input" option in the control panel.

I tried to disable the N-Trig device driver in the Device Manager but the driver did not seem to have be correctly installed (after upgrading from win7)

I went to the N-Trig driver download site (http://www.n-trig.com/Content.aspx?Page=Downloads_Drivers) and downloaded the new drivers for windows 8 (I have the feeling they were not there last week).

I then when to the "Device Manager" options on the "Hardware and Sound" page of the Control Panel.    

In the Device Manager display I saw a N-trig DuoSense Digitizers node with several sub-node underneath it (before dev driver install there was only one).

I right mouse buttoned on the item at the top, with a name ending in "Root Interface" and selected "Disable".   

This successfully disabled the touch screen.

Shame to lose the touch screen but my wife did not use it and I was in danger of my life as it was.

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  1. Anonymous
    2012-11-07T15:54:44+00:00

    Hi StephenAP,

    Thank you for choosing Windows 8 and thanks for providing us an opportunity to assist you.

    Based on the description, I understand that you want to disable touch screen on Windows 8, I would suggest you to refer the steps mention below.

    a.     Winkey + Q.

    b.     Type Control Panel.

    c.     Go to Hardware and Sound.

    d.     Pen and touch.

    e.     Click the touch tab.

    f.      Disable use your finger as an input.

    Reference:

    Touch, mouse, & search: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/touch-mouse-search-help#touch-mouse-search-help=windows-8&v3h=winvistatab1

    Thank you for posting the question in Microsoft Community. If you need further with this issue please don't hesitate to reach out to us.

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  2. Anonymous
    2012-11-09T03:14:55+00:00

    The new drivers may also have fixed the problem (some more testing required)

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  3. Anonymous
    2012-11-10T18:57:30+00:00

    I needed to disable my touch screen on Windows 8 because my touch screen is defective.  This computer is an old Win7 tablet that I bought refurbished so the quality was questionable.

    I was able to disable the touch screen by doing the following:

    1. Right-click and select "All Apps" at the lower right corner, then select Control Panel
    2. Select Hardware and Sound
    3. Select Device Manager
    4. Select Human Interface Devices
    5. From the list, look for the driver for the touch screen.  This can be tricky since on my tablet they are all listed as "USB Input Device" and there are 3 of them.  I found it by disabling and re-enabling one at a time until the touch screen stopped responding.  You can also identify the touch screen by checking the Properties | Details and get the "Hardware Ids" then do a search online to see what the device is.  In my case, the touch screen has the ID USB/VID_0EEF&PID_7302.
    6. Once you know which is the touch screen, disable the driver and the touch screen should no longer work

    Enable this device to make the touch screen work again.

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  4. Anonymous
    2012-11-25T18:37:49+00:00

    MR,

    The problem is that after upgrading to windows 8 there is no checkbox to unclick in the pen and touch tab.

    I have seen screen shots in google that with soms windows version that checkbox is available, but with the dell XPS not...

    So no possibility to diasable ?

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