This is the first computer I have ever bought and I couldn't bring it home without a mouse of its own. I'm trying to disable the touchpad but the only option I find is by uninstalling the drivers, which I think is a bit drastic, the buttons for activation and deactivation are disabled (I'm using windows 7 starter).
Do you have any idea of how to disable the touch pad when an external mouse is hooked up?
It depends on the driver you have, if it is an Synaptics touchpad, you can disable it by right clicking on the taskbar icon.
For Alps, I think you can do it from the mouse properties in Control Panel.
For anything else, or different versions, just hunt around a mix of the above - either the mouse options or taskbar icon.
Click Synaptics tray icon, select "Pointing Device Properties"; select "Device Settings"; you can either disable it, or, in Windows 7, have it disable automatically if you connect an external mouse.
This doesn't apply to Windows 7, but in Windows 10 there's a built in option to disable the touchpad when a mouse is connected.
Open the Windows 10 settings app (Ctrl+I), navigate to Devices → Touchpad, and uncheck Leave touchpad on when a mouse is connected
