Touchpad toggle

Accidentally touching my laptop's touchpad often causes disruptive
unintentional actions.

(There's a control to reduce its sensitivity, but I already have that
set to the least sensitive extreme.)

I can disable the touchpad through the control panel, but it's a bit
complicated. Is there any way I can set up a keyboard shortcut to toggle
my touchpad on and off?

Marshall Price wrote:
Accidentally touching my laptop's touchpad often causes disruptive
unintentional actions.

(There's a control to reduce its sensitivity, but I already have
that set to the least sensitive extreme.)

I can disable the touchpad through the control panel, but it's a bit
complicated. Is there any way I can set up a keyboard shortcut to
toggle my touchpad on and off?

That would really depend on what your particular touchpad manufacturer's
driver has setup and/or how good you are at creating macros/scripts to do
what you want if you know a way to do it now.

--
Shenan Stanley
MS-MVP
--
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

Shenan Stanley wrote:
Marshall Price wrote:
Accidentally touching my laptop's touchpad often causes disruptive
unintentional actions.

(There's a control to reduce its sensitivity, but I already have
that set to the least sensitive extreme.)

I can disable the touchpad through the control panel, but it's a bit
complicated. Is there any way I can set up a keyboard shortcut to
toggle my touchpad on and off?

That would really depend on what your particular touchpad manufacturer's
driver has setup and/or how good you are at creating macros/scripts to do
what you want if you know a way to do it now.

This is a Gateway laptop with a "Synaptics TouchPad V5.9" on (virtual)
Port PS/2. I've used macros and scripts a bit, but never to access
Control Panel settings.

Incidentally, the cursor appears in the middle of the screen whenever
Windows starts up, so it would be nice to have the macro or script shove
it down to the extreme lower left, too.

To disable the touchpad now, I type [Windows key] S (for Settings) C
(for Control Panel) M (for Mouse) [ENTER] Ctl+Shift+Tab (to get to the
last, "Device Settings" tab) Alt+D (for Disable) [SPACE] (for Okay on
the warning box) Alt+A (for Apply) [TAB] [TAB] [TAB] (to get to the Okay
button) [SPACE] (to activate the Okay button) and Alt+F4 (to close the
Control Panel).

Enabling it is somewhat similar. As for moving the pointer to the
extreme lower left, I don't know how to do that.

And it's been quite a while since I messed with macros! ;-)

Problem sorted.

I discovered AutoHotKey on the WWW and used AutoScriptWriter II, which
comes with it, to record two scripts -- one for enabling, and one for
disabling, the touchpad -- and to plant them on my desktop. Invoking
each causes AutoHotKey to start up, run the script, and exit.

I found only one minor, obvious glitch in each, for which AutoHotKey
provided the line number.

To use "Disable," I move the mouse pointer out of sight first and then
invoke the script. Using "Enable" is even easier.

That's all; I decided to Keep It Simple and Stupid, though the
application would allow plenty of sophistication, if I wanted to bother.
;-)


Marshall Price wrote:
Shenan Stanley wrote:
Marshall Price wrote:
Accidentally touching my laptop's touchpad often causes disruptive
unintentional actions.

(There's a control to reduce its sensitivity, but I already have
that set to the least sensitive extreme.)

I can disable the touchpad through the control panel, but it's a bit
complicated. Is there any way I can set up a keyboard shortcut to
toggle my touchpad on and off?
That would really depend on what your particular touchpad manufacturer's
driver has setup and/or how good you are at creating macros/scripts to do
what you want if you know a way to do it now.

This is a Gateway laptop with a "Synaptics TouchPad V5.9" on (virtual)
Port PS/2. I've used macros and scripts a bit, but never to access
Control Panel settings.

Incidentally, the cursor appears in the middle of the screen whenever
Windows starts up, so it would be nice to have the macro or script shove
it down to the extreme lower left, too.

To disable the touchpad now, I type [Windows key] S (for Settings) C
(for Control Panel) M (for Mouse) [ENTER] Ctl+Shift+Tab (to get to the
last, "Device Settings" tab) Alt+D (for Disable) [SPACE] (for Okay on
the warning box) Alt+A (for Apply) [TAB] [TAB] [TAB] (to get to the Okay
button) [SPACE] (to activate the Okay button) and Alt+F4 (to close the
Control Panel).

Enabling it is somewhat similar. As for moving the pointer to the
extreme lower left, I don't know how to do that.

And it's been quite a while since I messed with macros! ;-)

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 19:09:58 -0500 from Marshall Price
:
I discovered AutoHotKey on the WWW and used AutoScriptWriter II, which
comes with it, to record two scripts -- one for enabling, and one for
disabling, the touchpad -- and to plant them on my desktop. Invoking
each causes AutoHotKey to start up, run the script, and exit.

Isn't that a wonderful utility?

I use AUtohotkey to correct all my common typing errors, like t-e-h
for t-h-e. It's like MS-Word Autocorrect, but I set it once and it
works with all programs. I've got lots of longer strings stored, and
am starting to develop more macros.

URL: http://www.autohotkey.com

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
"If there's one thing I know, it's men. I ought to: it's
been my life work." -- Marie Dressler, in /Dinner at Eight/

Marshall Price;423285 Wrote:
Problem sorted.

I discovered AutoHotKey on the WWW and used AutoScriptWriter II, which
comes with it, to record two scripts -- one for enabling, and one for
disabling, the touchpad -- and to plant them on my desktop. Invoking
each causes AutoHotKey to start up, run the script, and exit.

I found only one minor, obvious glitch in each, for which AutoHotKey
provided the line number.

To use "Disable," I move the mouse pointer out of sight first and then
invoke the script. Using "Enable" is even easier.

That's all; I decided to Keep It Simple and Stupid, though the
application would allow plenty of sophistication, if I wanted to
bother.



Marshall, can you post your autohotkey script for enabling/disabling
touchpad?

I work in IT so i needed a simple one click solution for this. After
googling around for awhile I patched together this code for the AutoIt
language. Just download AutoIt, save each of these scripts as a .au3
file and then you can convert this code to a .exe with custom icon.

ENABLE TRACKPAD CODE:


Code:
--------------------
Run("control.exe main.cpl")

Sleep(4000) ;Wait four seconds

WinWaitActive("Mouse Properties")
Send("^{TAB 7}") ;Presses CTRL+TAB 7 times
Send("!e")
Send("{ENTER}")
--------------------





DISABLE TRACKPAD CODE:


Code:
--------------------
Run("control.exe main.cpl")

Sleep(4000) ;Wait four seconds

WinWaitActive("Mouse Properties")
Send("^{TAB 7}") ;Presses CTRL+TAB 4 times
Send("!d")
Send("{ENTER}")
Send("{ENTER}")
--------------------