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

Thanks you for the advice to download the synaptics driver. it worked a dream on my Lenovo. its a shame i've spent hours trying to solve side right swipe gesture. I will never buy another Lenovo!

Seems to work for my Dell Inspiron laptop.  I disabled right edge swipes.

This is what I did:

1. Control panel>Mouse> Change Mouse Settings>Dell Touchpad> "click to change touchpad settings">Gestures>One Finger Gestures>Right Edge Swipe.  
2.  Turn Right Edge Swipe off by clicking check box on left.
3. Save.

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!

I would very much like to turn these things off too but I have a Lenovo Ideapad and I cannot find the edge swipe options.  I have followed the instructions above but I've clicked on every option under device setting> setting and I have not found it.  I found Edge Motion but that does not seem to the correct item...  any help would be very much appreciated. 

Hi. Can I start by saying I'm clued up with some things, but really a novice compared to most of you guys on here. A BIG thanks to who wrote the original post above.

 

I have a new Lenovo G580 laptop and in the control panel mouse properties under the last tab I have an "Elan" smart pad. Under the tab there was a bullet ticked to say there was an icon in the system tray (that looks like a screen monitor of all things). When I double clicked on this icon in the hidden icons area it was there that I found the edge swipe setting. I've now disabled it and voila!! the side bar is now disabled via edge swipes. Thank f!*@ for that. This has driven me insane since day 1!!

Many thanks, and I hope this will help those with the new Lenovo Laptops. All the best. Jules.

Thank you! I have a Lenovo as well and there was that Icon! It works.  I was going crazy. It would pop up and up and up.  I was trying to show some work to a client on my laptop - how embarrassing was that?

Thanks Devon!  I won't download something I find on a thread.  I am glad for your advise on Windows 7 and XP.  I don't know what I am going to do.  very frustrated.  V