Windows – way to disable/enable a device that has does not allow disabling? (Windows 10)

driverstouchpadwindows 10

I have a newish laptop that I've been using for a couple of months. For the most part I love this computer, but there is one headache I absolutely have to solve in order to maximize productivity on this device.

Here's the basics on my device:

System: HP Pavilion x360 14t-cd100 CTO
OS: Windows 10 Pro
Memory: 16gb
Drive: 1tb

Here's the problem. The Touchpad (technically called a "ClickPad," the latest generation of Synaptic touchpad technology) cannot be disabled. It's large, and though the software used to manage it tries to prevent unwanted taps, moves, selections, etc. while typing, it's less than adequate. I need to be able to disable and enable this touchpad on the fly using a keystroke.

I have the Windows Toolkit installed so I can use devcon, but although devcon can find the device and show me its status:

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> devcon hwids *Syn*
ACPI\SYN3288\4&EC6F790&0
    Name: Synaptics SMBus ClickPad
    Hardware IDs:
        ACPI\VEN_SYN&DEV_3288
        ACPI\SYN3288
        *SYN3288
    Compatible IDs:
        *ETD0000
        *PNP0F13
1 matching device(s) found.
PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> devcon status "ACPI\SYN3288"
ACPI\SYN3288\4&EC6F790&0
    Name: Synaptics SMBus ClickPad
    Driver is running.
1 matching device(s) found.

When I go to disable this device, It's "No matching device(s) found:"

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> devcon disable "ACPI\SYN3288"
ACPI\SYN3288\4&EC6F790&0                                    : Disable failed
No matching devices found.

I am running the latest, 64bit devcon for Windows 10, and I am able to disable/enable other devices, such as the touchscreen:

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> devcon disable "ACPI\ELAN2514"
ACPI\ELAN2514\4&33AB941E&0                                  : Disabled on reboot
The 1 device(s) are ready to be disabled. To disable the devices, restart the
devices or reboot the system .

When I go into Device Manager, I find that I'm unable to disable the touchpad even there, as there is no option to do so in the right-click context menu and the "disable driver" button is grayed out in the properties driver tab:

There are no switches or built-in hotkeys (as would normally be present on other HP laptops). I have the most up-to-date driver from HP (literally just a few days old). I've discussed this with HP support and they tell me that the inability to disable the touchpad is "by design, as the unit would have to be sent back to HP to reenable it." Complete nonsense. Just plug in a USB mouse, but you have their position on the matter.

I can disable the touchpad if I use an external mouse, while the external mouse is present. But this isn't what I want to do. I want to be able to just use this computer as is without having to pull out a mouse every time I wish to use it and to be able to disable and enable the touchpad at will with a simple keystroke.

My gut feeling is that there is a way to make it possible to disable/enable this touchpad in the manner I wish to do so, but that this solution is deep and beyond my current abilities. I've studied the INF files and registry entries associated with the touchpad drivers. But nothing stands out as obvious.

I've installed and tried out every touchpad manager utility, without success. One way or the other, they either don't work as desired to limit touchpad interference or they go too far in the other direction, forcing me to wait longer than is comfortable for the touchpad to start accepting input again. There is one utility that lets you assign a keystroke to disabling and enabling the touchpad, but it doesn't recognize my touchpad as being compatible with this feature, possibly for the same reason that devcon can't find it when I try to disable it.

I've done all my homework on this. I'm at my wits end. I'm willing to go deep and fiddle with the internals; I just need to know how to do so.

Any help would be appreciated–vastly.

Thank you,

EAT

Best Answer

EDIT:

Now that I actually read the whole question (thanks for pointing out what I missed), one more dumb thing to try:

(3) https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c03882926

HP says that the enable/disable is under "Mouse Settings" / "Additional Mouse Options"; they added a special tab to the option dialog.

Wrong Answers

Sorry if I missed it already in the responses, but I had two dumb things you could try:

(1) I usually can disable my touchpad in BIOS, or

(2) HP says some of them have an "on/off switch"[see below] (but usually not yours).

If this answer doesn't help I'll just delete it.

Related Solutions

Windows – How to Enable Momentum on Elan Touchpad

NOTE: This answer is outdated. You don't need to modify the driver configuration file to enable Momentum anymore. You can simply change the relevant DWORD values at the following registry keys to enable/disable Momentum and a host of other features.

To enable Momentum, set Momentum_Enable and Momentum_Display to 1. You can find them in the registry keys listed below.

For Windows 10:

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Elantech\SmartPadDisplay
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Elantech\SmartPad

After doing this, Momentum or 'Inertia' related settings will start showing up in the 'Elan Smart-Pad' application that lets you configure various features of the touchpad.

I finally figured out how to enable Momentum (called Inertia in Elantech touchpads) as well as a host of other hidden features in ELAN manufactured touchpads.

Thanks to this blog post, I found out that the way to do this was to edit Elantech drivers (ETD.inf). If you're using WHQL inbox drivers, you'll probably have to downgrade to older Elantech drivers for this to work.

Make sure that the touchpad drivers you have include a setup.exe file so you can install the drivers. You'll also have to run Windows in Test Mode with integrity checks disabled so you can install the modded drivers. To restart Windows in Test Mode, run the command prompt as administrator and enter the following commands:

bcdedit -set loadoptions DISABLE_INTEGRITY_CHECKS
bcdedit -set TESTSIGNING ON

Uninstall the previous touchpad drivers and make sure you check the Delete the driver software for this device box
driver delete

Now open ETD.inf in the Elantech drivers folder with a decent text editor (I recommend Notepad++) and change all instances of

Momentum_Display,%REG_DWORD%,0

Momentum_Display,%REG_DWORD%,1

Also change the first instance of (you'll find this in the [ETD_SmartPadUI_Default.AddReg] section)

Momentum_Enable,%REG_DWORD%,0

Momentum_Enable,%REG_DWORD%,1

If you'd like the cursor to bounce off of screen edges, then change:

Momentum_Bounce_Enable,%REG_DWORD%,0

Momentum_Bounce_Enable,%REG_DWORD%,1

There are lots of other options you can enable/disble as well. However, I'll leave it to you to experiment with them. You'll find the most interesting settings in the following sections:

[ETD_SmartPadDisplay_Default.AddReg]
[ETD_SmartPadDisplay_Win8.AddReg]
[ETD_SmartPadUI_Default.AddReg]

WARNING: Make sure you know exactly what you're doing here or you could end up with an unstable driver and lots of BSODs. I recommend making a backup of the original drivers before you start to modify them.

After you've finished editing the drivers, reboot your computer and install the new modded drivers by running setup.exe

Windows – way to force Windows to use Precision Touchpad drivers rather than Synaptics

I found a way to do this and I have posted a quick tutorial here: The Verge Forums. This works on my HP Spectre X360 (2017) that has a synaptics touchpad. I cannot guarantee this will work for everyone, but it is worth a shot. My tutorial is based on the findings from here (reddit post).

UPDATE

So I noticed that with this hack, the driver would break after the system woke from a sleep state. By "break" I mean the touchpad would work, but none of the touchpad settings / precision functionality would be present. Interestingly enough, this issue did not happen when the machine would wake from hibernate, only when waking from sleep. To fix this, you need to create a windows task that restarts the driver on system wake.

To begin, first you need to grab a copy of devcon.exe for your particular operating system install. See this other superuser post for that. After you have devcon.exe on your machine (in my case, I put it under C:\Program Files\DevCon) you need to identify the driver you need restarted.

Shift+Left-Click in the folder that contains devcon.exe and select the "Open CMD/PowerShell" context menu item. From here we can determine the ID of the driver we need to restart.

devcon.exe /find ROOT*

This command will bring up a list of different items. Look for the one with the description of "Synaptics HID-Compliant Touch pad Device" or something similar. For me, this maps to "ROOT\SYNHIDMINI\0000" which is the ID I am interested in for restarting purposes.

Once you have your ID, you need to create a scheduled task (as administrator!) to reset this device by ID. To do this, open Task Scheduler (you can search for this in the start menu) as an administrative user. Within the task scheduler window, create a new task:

Fill out the task's name (such as "Restart TouchPad On Wake") and description. Be sure to set it to run as a user with administrative privileges and to tick the "run with highest privileges" box. Also be sure to select the radio button for "Run whether user is logged in or not."

Next, click the triggers tab and create a new trigger. The trigger should begin the task on an event with the log being System and Source being Power-Troubleshooter. Event ID should be 1 (this stands for system wake).

Next, under the actions tab, create a new action. The action should be "start a program" and the Program/Script field should point to your full install path of devcon.exe. The arguments should be something like

/restart "@FULL_ID_THAT_YOU_FOUND_EARLIER_HERE"

The "@" symbol preceding your ID is important as well as the quotes!

Finally, be sure to open the conditions tab for the task and un-tick the box under the power heading that states "Start the task only if the computer is on AC power." This ensures the task still runs even when you are not plugged in.

Finally click ok and ensure that your task has been created. Now every time your system is woken up from sleep, this task will run devcon.exe and tell it to restart the synaptics driver as an administrative user. This should ensure that the driver is properly initialized for use and that you will have all of your Microsoft Precision goodness at all times.