Question: I own a Dell Inspiron N5050 Notebook running Windows 7 Home Premium. I am trying to permanently disable the touchpad. I installed the appropriate driver in order to manage my touchpad preferences, and successfully disabled it - but once the machine was rebooted, the touchpad was on again. I really don't care if I will need to keep disabling it each time I boot up, but does anyone know of a way to permanently disable it?

Answer: 
**Approach 1: BIOS**

The touchpad can usually be disabled in BIOS. On my Dell Latitude E6430s, the option is *POST Behavior*, *Mouse/Touchpad*. There is even an option to disable the touchpad only if an external mouse is attached.

**Approach 2: Device Manager**

Open Control Panel, System, Device Manager. Navigate to the mouse, right click on it and click Disable.

**Approach 3: Physically unplug**

According to a disassembly video, it appears that you can unplug the touchpad by removing the keyboard (at 3:45) and removing the small ribbon cable near the touchpad.

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NR0iRYLEO9s>
For a simple, ugly, non-technical option, you could just cover the touchpad with tape.