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: 
`![](https://i.stack.imgur.com/T0oPO.png) (Win)`+`X` opens the "Windows Mobility Center". 
On my Dell Inspiron (running Windows 7), it looks like this:

![Windows Mobility Center](https://i.stack.imgur.com/g1gyR.png)

I disabled my touchpad there, and it has stayed disabled through many reboots.
You don't really have to disable the entire touch pad, you just have to turn off the tap to select feature. Go to Control Panel>Mouse and select the touch pad tab. Find the tap-to-select tab, uncheck the enable box, and click OK.
Then, just touching the pad will have no effect, but it will still respond to a moving finger. And the change is permanent.