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

Happy to help, nadobee!  Believe me, I know the feeling all too well, LOL!  I haven't found out too many more things because I'm currently focused on trying to get some of my favorite (old) programs to work, or else get them replaced, and then I will defrag the whole mess, try to use an ISO-maker to image the whole disk, and then 1) back up the entire system to DVD (to be safe!), and 2) make a bootable USB using the Windows Physical Environment (a.k.a. "WinPE") and the full-disk ISO.  ----  All of the above is being done via Open Source/GNU software; are you familiar with the SourceForge.com website?  That's a great place to check for things :)

Have fun!

Hi, Sassy,

For better or worse, the info I wrote about bypasses *all* touchpad drivers and just uses the plain-old-vanilla (and probably ancient...) "PS/2 compatible mouse" option.  As far as I have been able to find out, there is simply no other way to turn off all edge-gestures/"swipe" options, apparently because all of the dedicated touchpad drivers seem to have been written by people who couldn't imagine why anyone would dislike "gestures".   By using the plain "PS/2 compatible mouse" option, the touchpad will still work, but it will work as a basic one:  left click button, right click button, moving the cursor, and double-tap to open a file or link.

OH!!!, one more thing I did notice - I slowed down the cursor speed in "mouse options", because the laptop touchpads seem to be hypersensitive when it comes to using graphics programs, and move the pointer in a jerky manner that is maddening.  To adjust pointer speed, you just use the Mouse settings options in the Control Panel, even though the initial panel will probably say "no PS/2 mouse detected", because the integrated mouse is connected differently - I don't know why or how; I only know that the panel setting the pointer speed and so on can still be used and will apply to the "PS/2 compatible mouse", meaning, the touchpad...

The functions linked-to by the "charms" and "apps" and so on can be accessed in other ways, so no functionality is lost by using the plain vanilla "PS/2 compatible mouse" driver - those functions just have to be accessed by other means.

I receive email notifications when there are replies to this thread - I don't check email every day, but if there are more questions, I will try my best to answer - I'm still pretty new to Windows 8.1 ...

Hi, I've also got a Toshiba Satellite with a synaptics mouse/trackpad but I'm still having issues turning off edge swipes. Everything you described is the same on my computer except for the option to disable edge swipes in the mouse settings.  These are the only options I am given. 

Anybody else having this problem too, or is it just me? This edge swipe nonsense is really aggravating me and I can't figure out how to disable it!

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! I was in such a foul mood using my new computer, wanted to throw it against the wall.  You saved my sanity and prolonged the life of my computer!