Windows 7: Diabling the touchpad.

Hi there.
I have a smal problem, a laptop with preinstalled vista upgraded to windows 7.
The laptop had a soda pored all over it a while back. I opened it up, dried / cleaned it, and reassembled the computer. It works fine aside from the touchpad acting all funny. (starts right clicking like mad after a few minutes) In Vista I could disable the PS2 mousepad trough the Device management. In Windows 7 however I am unable to disable certain hardware modules on a laptop, the button being greyed out (no restrictions as to what i can disable on my stationary computer with windows 7 tough) If I uninstall the drivers it just autoreinstalls the device after reboot.

Anyone have an idea how to work around this silly restriction? As it is now I cant use my computer with windows 7!



/ Ledaren

Install the correct and latest (most likely Synaptics) drivers for your mousepad. Then, force Device Manager to refresh (select 'Scan for hardware changes'). Try now and see if you can disable from Device Manager the mousepad.

Thanks for the reply

However it did not work.
When entering the Synaptics software that comes with the driver bundle I can disable the touchpad in a sense, but the system has already loaded the drivers and I figure that this "soft" disable is there to help with the problem some netbooks had with Windows 7 (pointer jumping around when writing with big hads, because the touchpad couldn´t be shut off).
My problem remains. The disable button is still greyed out in device manager.

So using the latest downloadable drivers from Synaptics would still not allow you to open the Device Manager menu for the device? That is strange because if the device 'works' then you should be able to access the Device Manager menu for it.

Sounds like the soda has either fried the touchpad or has dried to a very sticky state and either keeping the button stuck or is shorting out the touchpad. Since you already had the laptop apart once you could always just do the same but this time leave the touchpad ribbon cable unplugged from the MB and use a mouse until you can get a replacement. I don't know your laptop model but you can usually find touchpads on ebay at a very reasonable price.

Ledaren,

Please complete your system specs. This will help us give you advice related to your system.

I disconnected the smal flatcable to the touchpad, solved the problem.

Thanks for the replies.

out of interest ,isn't there a keboard shortcut to disable the mousepad,im using a lenovo and by pressing Fn and F8 simultaniously this disables the trackpad ,there is often a symbol on the f keys of a trackpad with a line through it to signify it off