How to completely disable Touch Screen on Windows 7

Question

I have a Dell Precision laptop, and on Windows 7 I've been having trouble with the touch screen. The cursor jumps around the screen when I'm not touching it. I'm not sure if it's a driver issue, or a hardware issue, but it's really annoying. Since I don't use the touch screen anyway, I figured I would just disable it.

So I went into the "Touch" tab in "Pen and Touch" in Control Panel, and unchecked the "Use your finger as an input device" option. This mostly works. However, on the Ctrl-Alt-Delete screen, or when any UAC dialog is displayed, the touch screen works again and as a result the cursor starts jumping around again.

Is there another way to disable the touch screen in Windows 7?

Solution

So I found the "Tablet PC Input Service", stopped and disabled it, and the problem seems to have gone away.

Comments

[Ramhound]

The best way would be to disable the device itelf.

[Gerald]

That was my first idea, but there doesn't seem to be a way to do that. There are no settings in the system BIOS or any buttons or switches to disable it. Typically, I did find a solution minutes after posting the question, even though I've had the problem for over a months :/

[Ramhound]

It would have been listed in Device Manager

[Gerald]

Ahh, I see what you mean now. Yes, after I found the right one of about 10 different "HID-compliant device" entries, that worked as well. I guess so many unnamed devices may be an indication that the underlying problem could be a driver issue after all.

[Ramhound]

It could be. The device if install should have been listed along any other Pen/Touch devices in Device Manager.

[Gerald]

In fact it was. Apparently the Dell driver disk either didn't contain or somehow didn't install the N-Trig DuoSense MultiTouch Digitizer device driver, so I ended up with some default Windows drivers. I found the right drivers on the N-Trig site and installed it, and now I no longer have the jumping cursor problem. Whew.

[Ramhound]

I am happy my thought process lead to an answer

[Josh]

This is probably the best way to disable it completely. Good catch.