How can I disable laptop keyboard but not wireless keyboard? (Windows 7)

Question

I am using Windows 7 on an Acer Aspire 5755G laptop. How can I disable my laptop keyboard without disabling the wireless external keyboard?

(I guess I am looking for the Windows 7 equivalent of this AskUbuntu question.)

Answer 1

The "Disable" option was not available to me, and attempting an uninstall required me to restart, which promptly reinstalled the driver!

These results helped me find more search terms, which led me to a suggestion by Tiga (on another site) to deliberately use an incompatible driver:

• Open Device Manager
• Select "Update Driver"
• If prompted to check online or use existing drivers, choose existing drivers only
• Display incompatible drivers (or de-select "Only use compatible drivers")
• Choose one
• Restart
• Keyboard is now disabled (and in my case, touchpad too, which I'm fine with)

To restore the keyboard:

• Choose the compatible driver
• Restart

Answer 2

Open Device Manager in your laptop.
Expand the Keyboards section.

You might be seeing this (if you have not yet connected the external keyboard) :-

The keyboard arrow marked in red is the inbuilt keyboard your laptop has. (Your laptop's keyboard might have a different name)

Now connect your wireless keyboard.
You will see another keyboard added under the keyboards section in device manager (arrow marked in green).

Again, your wireless keyboard would have a different name than mine (mine is wired). This is just an example.

Now right click on the inbuilt keyboard and click 'uninstall' (marked with red arrow).This will disable your inbuilt keyboard.
Do not panic as the inbuilt keyboard's drivers would be reinstalled as soon as you restart the machine. However, uninstall the inbuilt one only after you have plugged in your wireless one.

Answer 3

Samuel Nicholson is correct. You should see 2 Keyboards in your device manager under the keyboard category when you have the wireless keyboard connected. You can right click on Computer/My Computer and choose Manage to get there quickly.

Right click on the keyboard that is not wireless/bluetooth and disable should be an option.

Answer 4

Download Sysinternals Suite from Microsoft (https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb842062). After installing the Suite, go to the Sysinternals folder and launch 'autoruns.exe' . When autoruns.exe opens click on the 'Drivers' tab. From there you can do [Ctrl]+F (find) and type i8042prt.sys or scroll down until you find i8042prt.sys . Once you find it, uncheck its corresponding check box and restart your computer.