Windows 8.1 -- disable touch screen?

Question

My computer comes with a touch screen. I may want that someday, but right now I don't. Is there a way to disable it? I am running Windows 8.1. Thanks!

EDIT: When I go to Pen and touch via control panel, this is what I see. There is nothing about using my fingers as input

enter image description here

score 8 · Answer 1 · edited Jul 23 '14 at 17:57

8

Start the Device Manager, e.g., through Control Panel, or by running devmgmt.msc from

Start > Run, or
+R, or
Command Prompt

Expand "Human Interface Devices" and disable the touch screen from there:

enter image description here

Be careful to not shutdown your keyboard and/or mouse!

edited Jul 23 '14 at 17:57

Scott - Слава Україні

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answered Dec 27 '13 at 21:07

MDT Guy

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I see an option to disable my screen. But will that stop it from displaying anything? That would be bad . . . – William Jockusch Mar 17 '14 at 18:46
No, don't disable anything under display adaptor, it should be under human interface device. – MDT Guy Mar 17 '14 at 19:15
Yes, under Human Interface Devices, I can disable the screen or not. But it doesn't say anything about touch there. So I don't know if it will disable the screen completely, or just turn off touch. – William Jockusch Mar 17 '14 at 19:20

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 16 '20 at 15:19

You can disable a touch screen device with PowerShell. Here is a code snippet that works on Windows 10.

# Get 'Plug & Play' (PNP) devices by name
$devices = Get-PnpDevice  | where friendlyname -like "*touch*" 

# Disable devices
$devices | Disable-PnpDevice -Confirm:$false
# Enable devices
$devices | Enable-PnpDevice -Confirm:$false

for earlier windows releases you can use WMI to get the same devices:

gwmi Win32_PnPSignedDriver | Where-Object { $_.DeviceName -like "*touch*" }

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited Nov 10 '13 at 08:54

0

Try these steps

Press + Q
Type Control Panel
Go to Hardware and Sound
Pen and touch
Click the touch tab
Disable use your finger as an input

Reference

edited Nov 10 '13 at 08:54

Ashildr

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answered Oct 14 '13 at 15:32

kobaltz

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-1. The question includes a screenshot of the control panel item you direct us to. As you can see there is no obvious way to disable the finger as input. [I see the same as the questioner](http://i.stack.imgur.com/bJKX2.png); on the touch tab shown in the screenshots, where would you "Disable use your finger as an input"? – dumbledad Dec 23 '13 at 16:07
I agree with @dumbledad. The page this answer links as a reference also suggests disabling the touch input device in the Device Manager, which has more "helpful" votes than any other answer. – dotVezz Dec 23 '13 at 16:08
Apologies kobaltz, I realise that the screen-shot was added four days after the answer! – dumbledad Dec 23 '13 at 16:32

Windows 8.1 -- disable touch screen?

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