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Im looking how I can disable my laptop keyboard, I looked into the Device manager and there is no "Disable this device", Don't want to uninstall it, just turn it off.

I'm just troubleshooting some hardware issues.

any suggestions ?

Thanks

7 Answers7

15

I think that the reality is too bad: there is no nice solution for disabling a laptop keyboard without physically removing it (if you uninstall the driver, Windows will re-install it automatically). See this discussion forum for more precision: https://www.techsupportforum.com/hardware-support/laptop-support/250095-how-disable-laptop-keyboard.html

However, there is a way to disable a laptop keyboard by installing an incompatible driver!

The instructions are:

  1. Go to Device Manager and select the keyboard driver for your laptop. Right-click -> Properties.
  2. Click on the driver panel and select the "Update..." button.
  3. Here, choose "browse my computer" -> "Let me pick from a list of available..." you can choose an incompatible driver (you should unselect the option "Find compatible driver" or "show compatible hardware"). The one I have chosen (and the safer) is the "HID Keyboard Device".
  4. Restart and that's it!! You are done.

I hope it will help other folks here.

Nas Banov
  • 115
6

You may use devcon from Microsoft

The DevCon utility is a command-line utility that acts as an alternative to Device Manager. Using DevCon, you can enable, disable, restart, update, remove, and query individual devices or groups of devices. DevCon also provides information that is relevant to the driver developer and is not available in Device Manager.

the link contain a detailed page about how to use it,

for your case, just put

devcon find *

To lists device instances of all devices that are present on the local computer.then,

devcon disable [ your-keyboard-HardwareID ]

to disable devices that match that specific hardware or instance ID

3

Few suggestions:
LockKeyboard
KeyboardLock

or maybe the best yet: Kid-key-lock (don't ask, I didn't make the name)

Why do you wish to lock your keyboard ? Wouldn't just locking the user out do the job ?

Rook
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3

The only way is to physically disconnect the keyboard.

See this article : "Repairing the keyboards of Compaq laptops".

If what the guy describes in the above page solves the problem, you might save yourself the trouble.

If it doesn't, then repeat the operation, but just omit the described step 8 and do not reconnect the cable.

(I take no responsibility for any mistakes in the execution of this operation.)

harrymc
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For me I was trying to disable "Standard PS/2 keyboard" and was able to do so by nerfing some well-known ps2 service.

admin console

sc config i8042prt start= disabled

ref: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGlbR4EsaQw

sc config i8042prt start= auto

to revert

rogerdpack
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0

Check this out! http://www.100dof.com/products/kid-key-lock

I had the same problem. It seems to work pretty well.

ScreenShot

JoshP
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JMP
  • 9
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+1 for the answer provided by fabien7474! With one slight difference - my Asus UL56V with Windows 7 showed "Keyboard Device Filter" and "HID Keyboard Device". By disabling the second option, I ended up disabling the USB keyboard :) But disabling Keyboard Device Filter by changing to a Japanese keyboard did the trick for me!

P.S. No one on the whole Internet managed to come up with such an elegant fix for such a common (and serious) problem!

Cheers!