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
    2014-10-01T01:42:56+00:00

    For a Toshiba Satelite S75Dt-A with windows 8 you can just go to device manager and then click on the little arrow beside the Human Interface Devices and then right click on the HID-compliant touch screen and hit disable. Do the same thing to enable it again.

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-10-14T03:47:28+00:00

    awesome man! that tip was spot-on! thanks a lot!

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-10-16T02:22:29+00:00

    I finally returned my Dell 7440 and got a surface pro 3. It rocks. All my hardware issues are gone.

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  4. Anonymous
    2014-10-25T06:52:50+00:00

    Unplug every USB device (mouse, keyboard, wireless dongle etc.) before you try this, the list of USB devices would be shortened a lot, and there maybe just one USB device is left - the touch screen.

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