Argh! Make it go away!

Caporegime
Joined
8 Mar 2007
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Location
Surrey
Got a new laptop (Dell XPS13) and it has a touch screen and Windows 8.1, but I am never going to use the on screen keyboard. Its not a flip screen so I will always have access to the keyboard.

I've disabled the keyboard popping up by stopping the service, but the toolbar on the task bar wont go away! So theres this giant keyboard image on the task bar that won't vanish. If you disable the toolbar, it just comes back the next time you boot up!

Argh!
 
I'm with Skeeter. If you have no intention of ever using an OSK (and if you always have a physical keyboard attached, why would you?) then asking to remove the icon for it isn't really asking for much.
 
Its the fact I turn off the Touch Keyboard toolbar, and then when I reboot its back!

The language bar in XP had a similar issue. You had to dive into its settings to get it to stay away.
 
Have you checked startup items with Ccleaner or something?

It's not startup.

Currently I've got a Wacom tablet connected to my monitor's USB hub. The hub is turned off when I turn the monitor off, but every time I come to turn the monitor on the next day, I've got the touch keyboard icon (I say icon, but it's bloody huge).

It's not as bad a situation as Skeeter's, as I've got a 24 inch 1920x1200 screen, so a fair bit more taskbar space. If I was on 1366x768 I'd have hit the monitor by now, such would be my frustration at having to remove it every time I used my computer.

As much as I like Windows 8, there must be an option to remove it, surely?
 
Oh it's another Windows 8 issue. I wouldn't know, I used it for about 45 seconds before I rage-formatted the partition.
 
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Its Windows 8 being helpful.

It detects there is a touch screen so give you the toolbar. If you disable it then it goes temporarily until you reboot or open some touch screen apps.

There is no way to cleanly disable the on screen keyboard in Windows 8. In order to get the pop up keyboard to go away on the login screen I've had to disable the touch keyboard service. Which makes the icon even more frustrating as it doesn't actually do anything!

Its a 1920x1080 screen but has some scaling on it so the icon is pretty large. I suppose it is meant to be jabbed with a finger, so needs to be. I just wish there was a way to disable the touch screen keyboard on touch devices.
 
Does this touchscreen thingy show as a device under the device manager? If so, have you tried disabling the device there? Disabling the device, may stop the toolbar appearing.

Just a thought, thinking out loud.. :)
 
Does this touchscreen thingy show as a device under the device manager? If so, have you tried disabling the device there? Disabling the device, may stop the toolbar appearing.

Just a thought, thinking out loud.. :)

Possibly, but I do use the touch screen, just not the on screen keyboard.

On my 8.1 install, if I uncheck the toolbar in the taskbar properties, it doesn't reappear on reboot.

Odd. What if you open up some touch apps, like the Metro ones, or Chrome?
 
Don't know if this helps but I Goolged "disable windows 8 on-screen keyboard" and it came up with this.

Seems there is a service for the keyboard which you can disable.
 
I've done that and stopped the on screen keyboard popping up, but the toolbar remains. It's made even worse as the service being disabled means the toolbar button doesn't actually do anything!
 
The language bar in XP had a similar issue. You had to dive into its settings to get it to stay away.

As I recall, you would right click on the language bar icon and turn it off, then it would pop up a message something like 'Do you want to turn the language bar off permanently? If so, tick this box' and as long as you did so, that was it gone.
 
Yeah, or there was an option within the Language settings too.

But simply right clicking on the task bar, selecting Toolbars, and unticking it meant that it came back. Same story here.
 
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