Disable the touchpad on my Dell Inspiron 8100

[MELTRONICS]

I have an Dell Inspiron 8100 that has a touchpad and a little eraser looking thingy . I have been trying to find a way to disable just the "tapping" feature on the touchpad, leaving the pad working only as a pointing device and not a clicking device.

Can you please tell me how to disable the touchpad and the eraser thingy so that the external mouse, attached a USB port, is the only device driving a cursor?
My laptop is running Windows XP Professional Edition

Thanks in advance for any help.

[Pugsly]

You can Disable the touchpad on your laptop. First, turn on or restart your computer. When the Dell logo comes up press F2 to open the BIOS setup program. Press the Alt + p keys three times to get to page. Near the middle of the screen you should see an option called Pointing Device. Change it from Touch Pad - PS/2 Mouse to just PS/2 Mouse. That setting should work fine for your USB mouse. Then save the changes, and exit the BIOS. The computer should reboot automatically.

The settings for the Pointing Device depends on the make of BIOS being used, so it will vary from laptop to laptop. Consult the user manual that came with the laptop for information on how to enter the BIOS for a particular laptop, and for information on the BIOS settings.