Windows 8.1 VM Thinks it's on a Touchscreen

I'm running Win 8.1 on an OS X system via VMware Fusion. I frequently get the "helpful" tips to swipe from here or there to do this or that, which of course I can't do. In addition, many sites force IE into mobile modes because it is delivering the wrong user agent.

I saw this post regarding the EdgeUI tips issue, but I'm wondering if that really isn't just a workaround to actually fixing the problem. Do you desktop users of 8.1 (non-virtualized) honestly get those messages?

I know about user agent spoofing, but I really want to correct the native user agent string, and again, I'm thinking this is all a deeper-level fix than workarounds. Maybe not.

Solution 1:

I had the same problem and noticed that in the device manager, Windows believed I had a "HID-compliant touch screen". I just told Windows to disable it and the swipe tips immediately disappeared.

Control Panel>Device Manager>Human Interface Devices>HID-compliant touch screen, right-click, select "Disable".

Solution 2:

On Fusion, I was also able to disable the touchscreen by opening the .vmx file of the vm and changed the touchscreen.vusb.present like this:

touchscreen.vusb.present = "FALSE"

After a reboot of the VM, the "HID-compliant touch screen" device was gone.

Credit to this page.