Solved Wireless mouse turns off touchpad/mousepad

I've had the same mouse since 2011-ish, and have been using it with my Windows 7 since then. However, when I connected it to my new Windows 8 laptop, things have changed.
Turning on the mouse once or twice renders the mousepad useless. This sucks because my battery is dying and I can't find a new one, so I'm replacing that but I want to fix the other bug too.

Is there anything I can do to make the wireless mouse stop turning off the mousepad?

Wireless mouse model: Rocketfish
Laptop model: Toshiba Satellite 15.6" Laptop Intel Celeron 4GB Memory 500GB Hard Drive Black C55-B5100 - Best Buy

Thanks in advance for any help.

That would be correct. Unless you go into Mouse properties in the Control panel and change the behavior, standard behavior will always be to disable Touchpad, while external mouse is attached.

Okay, I'll try that. Thanks!

broe23 said:

Unless you go into Mouse properties in the Control panel and change the behavior, standard behavior will always be to disable Touchpad, while external mouse is attached.

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Ummm, sorry, but no. That is not the "standard behavior" at all. In fact, the "standard behavior" - that is, the default setting is for both the mouse and the touchpad to still be enabled when an exterior mouse is connected to a notebook.

Note that notebooks are designed primarily for road warriors - that is, folks who take their notebooks to briefings and presentations. It is very common for notebooks to be connected to external monitors or big screen projectors and then the briefer then uses a hand-held mouse/pointer at the podium while an assistant is at the notebook itself. Both need and have mouse control by default.

You can disable the touchpad by going into the mouse properties, but that is not very convenient. So virtually all notebooks let you enable/disable the touch pad with a Function key - in the case of your Toshiba, this is noted on page 59 of your manual by pressing Fn + F5.

PokemonFan2000M said:

Turning on the mouse once or twice renders the mousepad useless. This sucks because my battery is dying and I can't find a new one

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Please elaborate. What battery is dying? The mouse's or the notebook's? The touchpad is hardwired to the notebook's motherboard so does no consume any significant notebook battery power.

The mouse's RF USB dongle does consume some power but it really is insignificant too. The mouse itself uses 1 AA battery and you should be able to find one of those just about anywhere.

Itaregid said:

PokemonFan2000M said:

Turning on the mouse once or twice renders the mousepad useless. This sucks because my battery is dying and I can't find a new one

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Please elaborate. What battery is dying? The mouse's or the notebook's? The touchpad is hardwired to the notebook's motherboard so does no consume any significant notebook battery power.

The mouse's RF USB dongle does consume some power but it really is insignificant too. The mouse itself uses 1 AA battery and you should be able to find one of those just about anywhere.

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I meant the wireless mouse's battery. When my last battery died, I couldn't find my battery box (since i just moved) and took a used one out of my room's box that happened to be near-death too, so I'm getting to replacing that sometime soon.

Itaregid said:

in the case of your Toshiba, this is noted on page 59 of your manual by pressing Fn + F5.

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Jeez, talk about knowing what you're doing! Thanks for the info. On my last laptop, turning the mousepad on/off had its own button under the Space key. I just assumed it was removed for inconventional reasons, but this is actually not the case. Thanks for telling me! :thumb:

Thanks for telling me!

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No problem. All notebooks let you disable this function, but as you noted, there is no industry standard. In fact, I also have a Toshiba notebook but a different model and it uses Fn + F9 to disable the touchpad. So there is not even a standard within the same maker!

So I finally tried the methods posted here (took me this long because I was at a family dinner all day yesterday) and I found:
-As Itaregid said, that box was not checked by default.
-Pressing FN+F5 did not enable the touchpad.
After going deeper into the settings and finding my touchpad, I found that only one part of the settings acknowledged that the touchpad was disabled when I turned the wireless one on. I pressed 'enable' and now it's not doing it anymore.

BUT!

I still have a big thanks to give to Ita for pointing out to me about FN commands. I feel kinda stupid, but I had no idea you had to hold that key to get the F# keys to function as F# keys! Thanks.

So are saying now after going deeper and changing the settings, the wireless mouse still disables the touchpad?