Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Synaptics TouchPad coexisting with a real mouse
Like many of you, I have a Dell laptop with the built in touch pad from synaptics. I have a difficult time using my computer because the touch pad is sensitive and when I'm typing a long document, the touch pad would often detect a "click" and instantly reposition the cursor and my subsequent keystrokes into some random place in my document, or worse another application. I had a difficult time disabling this because when I installed the Microsoft Intellipoint drivers, they took over the PS/2 mouse drivers for the keypad as well as the actual mouse I wanted it to control. The Intellipoint drivers didn't offer any way to configure the touchpad and disable it or change any of the other settings?
So the big question: how to use the new mouse drivers but still disable the touch pad? The first part of the answer is to trash the little PS/2 adapter and plug the mouse straight into the USB port. Then open the mouse applet from control panel. You should see a tab labeled hardware. On that tab you should see a PS/2 device and a USB device. If you did step 1 as listed, then click on the PS/2 line, then click the Properties button. On the properties page, you should see a "driver" tab. On the driver properties page is a button labeled "Update driver…" Click that and then choose the synaptics driver for the device. You'll have to step through a few dialogs to get there. I downloaded the 8.something drivers before I started hoping they would solve the problem. Anyway, once you get the PS/2 device (the touchpad and touchstyk) under control of the synaptics driver, reboot and it looks like everything works ok. It's a little weird though because I disabled the pad altogether. I thought at first it wasn't working because until I get logged on and everything gets initialized, you can still use the touch pad. However, it eventually shuts off and starts ignoring all input. Now if I can just get the styk to stop drifting without resorting to cutting the cable … I typed this whole entry without a single phantom click so I'm pretty sure this is the right formula.
My new mouse is the Microsoft wireless Intellimouse Explorer 2.0. If only it had one of the cool little USB connectors that stored in the mouse, it would be the perfect mouse.
So the big question: how to use the new mouse drivers but still disable the touch pad? The first part of the answer is to trash the little PS/2 adapter and plug the mouse straight into the USB port. Then open the mouse applet from control panel. You should see a tab labeled hardware. On that tab you should see a PS/2 device and a USB device. If you did step 1 as listed, then click on the PS/2 line, then click the Properties button. On the properties page, you should see a "driver" tab. On the driver properties page is a button labeled "Update driver…" Click that and then choose the synaptics driver for the device. You'll have to step through a few dialogs to get there. I downloaded the 8.something drivers before I started hoping they would solve the problem. Anyway, once you get the PS/2 device (the touchpad and touchstyk) under control of the synaptics driver, reboot and it looks like everything works ok. It's a little weird though because I disabled the pad altogether. I thought at first it wasn't working because until I get logged on and everything gets initialized, you can still use the touch pad. However, it eventually shuts off and starts ignoring all input. Now if I can just get the styk to stop drifting without resorting to cutting the cable … I typed this whole entry without a single phantom click so I'm pretty sure this is the right formula.
My new mouse is the Microsoft wireless Intellimouse Explorer 2.0. If only it had one of the cool little USB connectors that stored in the mouse, it would be the perfect mouse.
