Windows 8 and Synaptics TouchPad Driver

I installed Windows 8 on my Dell Studio laptop two weeks ago, and I found out that the Synaptics TouchPad driver supplied by Dell does not show the touchpad settings screen in Windows 8. I only use that screen to set the touchpad to disable itself when an external USB mouse is plugged in. Well, I could not do it in Windows 8.

Not until now, I mean.

Looking in the forums (specially http://www.sevenforums.com/hardware-devices/149723-synaptics-touchpad-auto-disable-usb-mouse.html and http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/449196-np8662-auto-deactivate-touchpad.html) I saw that the solution is very easy indeed: change a single key in the registry.

Literally:

For those of you who want the "Disable internal pointing device when external USB pointing device is attached" option in the synaptics control panel, open regedit and go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWARESynapticsSynTPEnh, right click and select New > DWORD (32-bit) Value and name it "DisableIntPDFeature". Modify it's value to 33 in hexadecimal, or 51 in decimal to enable it to be default on.

Works like a charm