How do I turn off the gesture swipe from my windows 8 laptop?

Anonymous
2012-12-29T22:23:55+00:00

I am trying to turn off the gesture swipe on my new laptop and no one seems to have an answer. I go online to look for an answer but it gives me some info to copy and use but it doesn't seem to work. Can someone PLEASE give me EXACT step by step directions on how to turn these gestures off? It's EXTREMELY annoying that while I'm playing a game or doing most anything at all that the charm bar opens or the most recent app bar opens!!! Not sure how much longer I can take this!!! Thanks

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Email and communications

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Anonymous
2012-12-30T10:40:27+00:00

Hi Josh,

Thank you for contacting Microsoft Community!

I understand that you would like to turn off gesture swipe. I will definitely help you with this issue.

  1. What is the make and model of the laptop?

I would suggest you to follow the steps and check if it helps.

a. Press Windows Key +R, type Control Panel.

b.             Click on Hardware and Sound, select Mouse then right click and select device settings

c.              Click on Settings.

From there you can adjust a lot of track pad settings, including Disable Edge Swipes and check.

If the issue persists or if the settings are not present, I would suggest you to contact computer manufacturer for further assistance.

Hope this helps. Try the above steps and get back to us for further assistance. We will be happy to help you.

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Anonymous
2013-04-14T20:05:48+00:00

OK all you Sony Vaio users, you are absolutely right.  There is no way to turn off the gestures from the mouse settings.  But... I figured out how to do it without having to change the registry.  Go to your apps screen and click on "VAIO Control Center"  form there go to "Mouse and Keyboard",  At the top of the list you will see "Turn on/off touchpad" with an on/off slider under it.  To the right of it is a "Details" button.  Click it.  That will open up another box saying "Enable Multi-touch functions" In there you will see a selection for "Show Charm"  Uncheck that, and you will not have to worry about those accidental swipes again.  YAY!!!

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  1. Anonymous
    2015-02-08T01:16:48+00:00

    AN EMAIL I SENT TO MICROSOFT REGARDING THIS BLOGPOST AND ONE OTHER SPONSORED BY MICROSOFT:

    DEAR MICROSOFT CUSTOMER SUPPORT:

    THE TWO URLs YOU HAVE SENT ME TO RESOLVE THE TOUCHPAD "EDGESWIPE" PROBLEM ARE MISLEADING, UNHELPFUL AND POTENTIALLY DANGEROUS TO MICROSOFT USERS BECAUSE THEY ARE:

    --  "BLOGS" HOSTED BY MICROSOFT WITH ABSOLUTELY NO OVERSIGHT BY MICROSOFT;

    --  COMMENTS POSTED TO THESE "BLOGS" CONCERN SPECIFIC COMPUTER BRANDS AND MODELS, USELESS TO MOST USERS; AND

    --  THREE YEARS OLD.

    MICROSOFT'S "CHAT TECH" ADVISED THAT I CAN SURELY SOLVE MY PROBLEM BY PAYING $149 FOR A "SERVICE AGREEMENT" TO SOLVE SUCH PROBLEMS.  THIS IS ABSURD; THE PROBLEM IS VEXING TO MANY, MANY MICROSOFT CUSTOMERS, AS THE "BLOG" ATTESTS, AND AS I HAVE FOUND.

    AFTER SPENDING HOURS SEARCHING MY CONTROL PANEL AND THE WEB, I FOUND THE SOLUTION TO THE "EDGESWIPE" PROBLEM AT http://www.emc.com.tw/eng/st\_tpn_sp.asp WHICH STATES:

    QUOTE:

    Q:  Why my cursor has inexplicably moving or click when I am typing?

    The main cause of unexpected cursor moving or click is the accidental palm contact with the touch pad.

    You can adjust your Palm Tracking setting to maximum to make your touch pad insensitive to "palm contacts."

    [HELPFUL PHOTOGRAPHS ARE SHOWN TO ILLUSTRATE.]

    UNQUOTE.

    THAT WEBSITE IS MAINTAINED BY THE MANUFACTURER OF MY COMPUTER'S TOUCHPAD, ELAN MICROELECTRONICS CORP., HSINCHU, TAIWAN, (http://www.emc.com.tw/eng/about_elan_4.asp).

    HOW DID I FIND ELAM?

    BY SHEER LUCK AND DETECTIVE WORK, CLICKING ON:

    CONTROL PANEL

    HARDWARE AND SOUND

    MOUSE

    LENOVO POINTING DEVICE, WHICH HAS FIVE TABS, ONE OF WHICH IS:

    DRIVER

    DRIVER FILE DETAILS

    FINDING 38 FILES, THREE OF WHICH CONTAIN THE WORD "EDGESWIPE" AND WERE LOCATED IN A SUBDIRECTORY CALLED "ELANTECH."

    SEARCHING THE WEB FOR "ELANTECH" AND FINDING A DOZEN COMPANIES OF THAT NAME, AND THEN REFINING MY SEARCH TO "ELANTECH" AND "TOUCHPAD."

    
    MICROSOFT CONTINUES TO RESEMBLE THE U.S. POSTAL SERVICE IN ITS UNHELPFUL ATTITUDE.
    
    JOCK STENDER
    
    CHARLESTON, SC
    
    FEBRUARY 7, 2015
    

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-12-30T23:05:21+00:00

    There are cases when the various solutions you can find on the Web won't work. Despite what @Robert Aldwinckle thinks (I mean BS like "BTW note that regardless of what pointing device you use there will always be some "edge ****" because that is the way that W8's UI works."), many people don't have the Mouse and Touchpad settings. We don't have Disable Edge Swipes either. Setting registry values like ActionType won't work either. And this doesn't happen only with a Sony vaio.

    All it took in my case (Dell XPS L702X) is having one of the latest (and might I add "very buggy") Synaptics touchpad drivers, for which Dell didn't bother to provide Windows 8 drivers despite encouraging to upgrade to Windows 8.

    As I've reported earlier today **here on this other forum**, you sometimes may have to resort to deleting, from the registry, some folders of the Synaptics driver. I'm guessing that most people, if not all, having trouble disabling the right edge swipe use the latest Synaptics drivers.

    Suggestions such as "In any case another option would be to disable your Touchpad entirely (e.g. via Device Manager) and then attach and use a real mouse" leave me flabbergasted. Guess what, Mr Brilliant Mind, we though about it too. Actually, on Dell XPS laptops, we used to use Fn+F3 to disable the touchpad. In my opinion, it is a very good touchpad. Thanks to Dell, Synaptics and/or Microsoft, Fn+F3 in Windows 8 turns on the light indicating that the touchpad is disabled, but that's all it does whereas with Windows 7, it actually did disable the touchpad. It's a known problem. But I've bought a laptop to use a laptop; I use the desktop machine when I need to. So, if the screen of a laptop were to somehow fail, you'd say: just plug in an external monitor? Really brilliant.

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-12-07T07:22:17+00:00

    I just spent the last half hour removing all the nastiness oft the Windows 8 UI. Seems MS went out of their way to make one of the worst UI experiences in recent memory. Hot corners, screen swipes. Who the heck puts this **** on a desktop. They got it right with 7, but could not leave well enough alone.

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