Sounds like you don't have the touchpad drivers installed. You can get them by going to the Download link though Dell's website. Once installed, you can access the Mouse Options in the Control Panel and then enable/disable the touchpad from there.

(See end of ranting for solution!)

The drivers help squat.

They do not allow one to disable both the touchstick AND the touchpad including both sets of buttons. It is an ABSOLUTE pain!

I cannot think why DELL driver developers were so braindead as not to automatically diable ALL built-in mice when an external (USB/PS2) mouse was connected. (Ala. Mac OS X)

There is also no BIOS option to disable the built-in mouse. (On the 9100/XPS)

So I did some searching in the registry, and came upon the following:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96F-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0000

Yours may vary, so try and look for the value name and value data pair:

DriverDesc : Alps Touch Pad

somewhere in : HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\

It should also contain the value:

"SelectDevice"=dword:00000003f

(or something similar)

Now first ensure the control panel mouse program is closed, now set the value of this to:

"SelectDevice"=dword:000000000

Now open up the mouse control panel again, and modify something not related to the disabling of the buttons (so you can press 'OK')

After pressing 'OK' the system will ask you if you are 'SURE' you want to disable both the devices... Geez! After all the trouble you had to go through! As if you can accidentally disable both!!!?

Anyhow... now life is good.

:)