How to disable my netbook's touchpad when a usb mouse is connected

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?

Solution 1:

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.

Solution 2:

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.