How to disable gestures (charms bar, edge swipes, etc...) without changing the registry

It looks like you can't totally disable Charms without going into the Registry. The fixes suggested above won't turn off the bottom right hand corner activation. Luckily, there is a terrific post on techattend.com by Waqas Ahmed -" How to disable Charms Bar in Windows 8.1"- which gives step-by-step instructions, with screen shots, on how to totally disable Charms by adding a line to the Registry. There are no downloads involved so no security issues. I have just worked through it and "Bingo" - Charms is dead.

Wow!

I've had a Windows 8 laptop for a few days and the charms bar/settings pages that kept popping up out of nowhere were driving me absolutely insane.  BUT, I finally figured out how to turn them off. 

I went into control panel>hardware and sound>mouse>device settings>settings.  From there you can adjust a lot of the trackpad settings, including DISABLE EDGE SWIPES. 

I have a Toshiba Satellite with a synaptics mouse/trackpad, so i cant guarantee this works with all models, devices, etc. 

Windows 8 for laptop is now tolerable!  Hope this helps!

THANK YOU so much for the solution.  It worked perfectly.  What a relief not to have the charms bar popping up all the time.

Try this; maybe it will work:

Control Panel>Mouse>UltraNav>TouchPad Settings>Application Gestures>Edge Swipes>Deselect “Enable Edge Swipes”

This seriously just spared me from throwing my new Lenovo out a window! The charms are beyond irritating. Thanks!

PS I was having a serious wifi issue until I read on another forum to disable "wmm" in the wireless adapter settings, hope that can help someone else!

I can't imagine why anyone would want the charms feature in the first place. After an hour on youtube with some well-meaning guy named Dan, none of his methods worked on my computer. The above method worked, so thank you! I was looking for a cheap backup laptop when I came across this Toshiba for $279. When I stared using it and the charms bars kept popping up, I almost threw it against the wall! Now that I've gotten rid of them, and installed a Windows 7 shell, I can get to work!