Windows 10: Laptop touchpad being recognised as mouse, and trying to resurrect and old laptop with an HDD.

I have no idea what cause this, but the touchpad of my old laptop became recognised as a mouse after I turned it on again after months of not using it. I have no ways of using any of the multi-finger functions, and this is getting really annoying as I cannot scroll easily. Plus, since this laptop was probably constructed with the idea of having Windows 7 installed with an HDD, and since it came with Windows 10, and that the BIOS will not accept a Linux install, I have to pass hours scrolling down web pages without the touchapad shortcuts to try and make it work. So, if anyone has a problem to

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I want to disable touchpad on Dell laptop


Hello everyone,
My laptop's touchpad works and I don't want it to, because I prefer a mouse. It's a Dell Inspiron 11 3000 series on windows 10 OS.

What I have tried that hasn't worked:

• start<settings<devices<mouse & touchpad<additional mouse options. This opens a window called Mouse Options which has 5 tabs up top, none of which involve the touchpad. The Hardware tab shows 2 devices: the mouse itself, and the USB. No touchpad there.
• windows key+x<mobility center. No touchpad to be found.
• various function keys. No options for touchpad on/off.
• device manager<mice and other pointing devices. Again, only the mouse and usb show up. It appears the touchpad is working without a driver, which is a little spooky.

Any other suggestions? I could try downloading a third party driver, but that seems like a step in the wrong direction.
Thanks

 

Resurrecting old laptop

My laptop crashed and I am trying to resurrect an old one to finish out the school semester. I've spent a couple of days trying to track down what I need to rebuild it. I cannot find the windows product key. It is not on a sticker on the bottom of the
machine.

It is an older machine so I know it had windows 8 installed at one point. I did a partition and it said it could not find windows, not sure if I did it correctly.

Without the product key for 8, I cannot purchase 8.1. Not sure what my next steps are since Microsoft no longer supports those old operating systems. What do you recommend?

Thanks.

 

I want to disable touchpad on Dell laptop


These 7 steps allowed me to disable my touchpad (Dell laptop, Windows 10):

1. Win Start button
2. Type in "device manager"
3. Select Device Manager to open it
4. Click down arrow to left of "Mice and other..." to expand
5. Right click Dell Touchpad
6. Disable device
7. Yes