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
    2013-03-30T02:53:51+00:00

    In my case, the laptop worked normal while on battery, and did the random touches when connected to power adapter.

    So instead of disabling the touch screen completely, all I had to do was to remove the "allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" in the Power Manager tab.

    So far, no more random screen "touches" for me.

    thanks.

    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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  2. Anonymous
    2013-04-22T01:50:34+00:00

    The N-Trig drivers for the L702X won't be updated past the beta release for Windows 8.  The company has stated so.  I've been researching this problem for about a year.  I think it's total BS that they've decided not to update the drivers past beta.  If I would have known this I wouldn't have spec'd out my laptop the way that I did in buying the touch screen with the laptop knowing that windows 8 was coming out and that it would be basically designed around the touch screen functionality.  Windows 8 is basically terrible without it.  I'm hoping that if enough people complain about it to N-Trig that they'll update the drivers.  Makes no sense to have the L702X with a touch screen if you're not going to update drivers on it.

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  3. Anonymous
    2013-07-08T14:29:37+00:00

    Its a good way to do it but didn't want to install driver and stuff so followed         

    MagicalPower255's way + I am using a ASUS computer and N-Trig doesn't have drivers for it

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  4. Anonymous
    2013-08-17T14:11:50+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.

    In windows 8 there  nothing  called "disable your finger input button or option

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