I have an HP Pavilion Notebook, with a Synaptics PS/2 Port Touchpad. I can't figure out how to deactivate the Charms
Which version? Read the release notes and see that changes were being continually made regarding Edge swipe support. So there would be a continuum from no Edge swipe support at all, such as I had originally in my tx2 and the fully controllable Edge swipe
support in the latest version. So, if you have a version somewhere in between those you would have whatever bugs and deficiencies would be implied by the changes the release notes documented as having been made subsequently.
other than possibly deactivating the touchpad altogether and using an external mouse. Not sure if that would just create more problems though.
Depends on what you are used to, what your experience with normal Touch is, and most importantly what your application is. E.g. if you are just using your Touchpad to move your pointer around the screen, get a real mouse. If you are wanting to simulate
Touch features such as scrolling in the Modern UI or multi-touch gestures such as the ones supported by W8 Narrator*, learn how to control your Touchpad to do that and above all be aware of the compromises that you are having to make to try using a simulation
of Touch support remotely from the screen.
* C.f.
If you have a new PC that supports four or more contact points, you can use touch commands to control your PC.
Hopefully someone on Microsoft is paying attention and will do something to fix this. Aren't they supposed to be releasing an upgrade with patches to address the many issues encountered since the first release?
Notice where the problem originates--in the Synaptics Touchpad Gesture Suite and its attempt to simulate Touch display functionality remotely from the screen without sufficiently training its users about the mental gymnastics they will need to perform to do
that. Synaptics has done a wonderful job of creating videos which show the features being used but not so good a job of warning users about how they should integrate them (or disable them) for everything else that they need to do with their Touchpad (such
as being a standard pointer device.)
FYI
Robert