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

Hello sydneyread,

What was the solution?

Thanks... I'm desperate 😓

Dear All Desperate People!

I did a bit of searching on the web and I think I have found a solution (for laptop users using a touchpad mouse). It has at least worked for me so far; the pesky thing has not popped up since I implemented it. I’m still holding thumbs, however!

The solution does involve going to the registry, but DON’T PANIC – it’s very simple, easy as ABC. Idiot-proof. And you can always change back if you think you made a mess.

I had two problems.

Problem 1: The charms bar appearing, as it is “supposed” to do, when you move the mouse pointer to the top or bottom right corners of the screen.

Problem 2: An altogether more annoying problem of the charms bar popping up in a black frame and also the calendar time and date appearing in a black rectangle, whenever I seemed to go anywhere near the right of the screen. Sometimes when I just touched the touchpad it would appear inexplicably. It doesn’t go away until you do something to make it go away, like press Esc or double click on something. This was intensely irritating as it was a constant interruption to work. There were times I wanted to throw my computer out the window!

**SOLUTION FOR PROBLEM 1:**For this one, you can download a ready-made registry file:

http://winaero.com/blog/wp-content/u.../08/edgeui.zip

I downloaded this file; it was safe and it worked. If you want to read the whole story, this is where I found it:

How to disable the Edge UI panels aka Charms Bar and Switcher in Windows 8

http://winaero.com/blog/how-to-disable-the-edge-panels-charms-bar-and-switcher-in-windows-8/

SOLUTION FOR PROBLEM 2:

What you are doing if you follow these steps is you are “making the trackpad edge swipe zones smaller”. If you keep your wits about you it's not at all difficult to do!

1. Press Win (the windows button on your keyboard) + R
2. Type regedit and press OK
3. When it asks, “Do you want to make changes”, click Yes
4. Registry Editor opens.   Navigate to

    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Synaptics\SynTPEnh\ZoneConfig\TouchPadPS2_3\Right Edge Pull.  (You might have something slightly different from this)

5. Right click on LoYRel, and click “Modify” (don’t get cold feet if you’ve come this far – you’re almost there!)
6. You need to change the “Value data”. Make a note of what it is so that if you are not happy later you can come back and change it back. Mine read 1388, and I changed it to 99999. Apparently what you are doing is decreasing the “hot” or “landing” active zone on your screen, and the higher the value, the smaller the zone, so when your mouse pointer goes there, the charms bar and calendar will no longer pop up (so I made sure mine was real high!)
7. Change the value, click OK, exit the Registry Editor, and Bob’s your uncle! I didn’t need to restart my computer; it worked immediately (I’m still holding thumbs though!)

You can still make the charms bar appear if you go to the extreme top or bottom right corners, swipe down (or up) along the edge a little and then in a litle towards the centre of the screen, but it's much easier to just press Win+C.

I hope this works for you – it worked for me and ended my frustrations! No more annoying interruptions!

The website I got this info on is

http://superuser.com/questions/498121/how-to-make-the-windows-8-trackpad-edge-swipe-zones-smaller

YOU are the BOMB!  This worked like a "charm". And I'm no longer ready to uninstall windows 8 to preserve my sanity!

Glad your frustration is ended!