[vRS]

Hi, i have got two Advent 8111 laptops and they are running fine apart from one small problem with one of the laptops.

The touchpad wasnt very good when i bought the laptops, and was originally installed as Standard pointing device on PS/2 Port 3.
I then installed the latest synaptics drivers on both laptops, but only one of them works properly.

I can change different settings on one, and can use the vertical scrolling, but on the other i cant change anything or do the vertical scrolling.

After installing the latest drivers, one of the touchpads is detected as Synaptics TouchPad V6.2 (the one with scrolling working), and the other is still Standard Pointing Device (the one that doesnt work).

Here are some pics to explain what is happening.

The first laptop where the scrolling and the drivers are working,

The second laptop where the scrolling isnt working.

In the device manager the touchpad is now coming up as Synaptics PS/2 Port Pointing Device, and when i go to 'mouse properties' on the 'buttons' tab under devices it says Synaptics TouchPad V6.2 on PS/2 Port 3, and also it says the same on the 'Device Settings' tab.

Then i did the same thing on the second laptop using the same drivers, but this time i get the little icon on the tray, but still cant use the vertical scrolling feature.
In the device manager the mouse is listed the same as on the first laptop, Synaptics PS/2 Port Pointing Device.
But when i go into 'mouse properties' on the 'buttons' tab under devices on the second laptop it says Standard Pointing Device on PS/2 Port 3, and also it says the same on the 'Device Settings' tab, whereas on the first laptop it says Synaptics TouchPad V6.2 on PS/2 Port 3.
Also when i click on settings i cant see any options apart from 'Overview' and 'Buttons', whereas on the first laptop i can change other settings such as 'Tapping', 'Virtual Scrolling', 'Pointer Motion' and also 'Sensitivity'.

I dont understand why it is working fine on one laptop and not on the other. They are identical laptops with the same hardware, and i have used the same latest drivers from the Synaptics website, but still cant get the mouse to work properly on the second laptop.

Also the touchpad on the second is pretty bad, and gets annoying after a while as it highlights, drags stuff when you just try and move the mouse normally.

Am i doing something wrong somewhere?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks

 

[TheMatt]

Hi,

Have you tried doing a system restore and reinstalling the new drivers? Perhaps something went wrong when installing the new drivers. Also, did you try uninstalling the old ones first and then installing the new ones?

 

[vRS]

Yep, i have uninstalled the drivers many times, and reinstalled them. Also rebooted many times but still the same.
I have tried older versions of synaptics drivers, and also Vista ones too but still the same.
Doesnt register the touch pad Synaptics TouchPad V6.2 etc, still thinks its a "Standard Pointing Device".

 

[TheMatt]

Try and install the touchpad drivers in safe mode, that may do the trick. The only other thing I can think of is using the Add New Hardware wizard to install the correct drivers. Can you give a link to the drivers you are downloading? I can tell you how to do this if you don't already know. Basically it involves extracting the actual driver (.sys) and the driver setup info (.inf) and having Windows copy that info itself. The only problem is that it might not install the touchpad software.

 

[vRS]

I'm downloading the Windows 2000/XP v8.3.4 drivers from this page http://www.synaptics.com/support/drive.cfm as i have got Windows XP MCE 2005 on my laptop.

I think that way you have mentioned may work, even if i install the hardware first so that windows picks up the Touchpad as Synaptics TouchPad V6.2 on PS/2, then if that works then it will just be a case of running the installer again so that it installs the TouchPad software. As everytime i am installing the software, it is installing the drivers for me at the same time, so if the drivers are installed first then it should work.
I just dont really know how to extract them and to get the driver i am looking for.

Thanks

 

[TheMatt]

To start, you should have the file downloaded somewhere on the hard drive, like your My Documents folder. Extract the contents so they are not in a zip file.

Reboot and go into Safe Mode to install the driver. This should prevent Windows from installing its generic driver. If you need to download anything or look at this post while you are doing the procedure, you can do Safe Mode with Networking so you can access the internet.

Start out by going into device manager. Find your "Standard" Pointing Device" and right click and select "Update Driver" to have it replace the generic driver with the Windows driver.

The Update Hardware Wizard should pop up. Select "No, not this time", the option that says you are not connected to the internet even if you are. Then in the next screen select "Install the Driver from a Specific Location"

Now, deselect "Search Removable Media" and select "Include this Location in the Search". Now, navigate to the folder where you extraced the driver. Select the folder where the .inf files are. Then click OK, and move onto the next screen.

It should find the driver, copy the files, and install the driver. Now boot back up normally, and you should be using the driver you downloaded. You might not get the configuration program though. If it fails to find the driver, try just running the setup program in safe mode.

 

[vRS]

Hi, i have just tried all the above but it still doesnt work.
When i manually try to install the touchpad drivers in safe mode, it installs them and asks to reboot.
When i reboot, it seems to have automatically installed the config program for the touchpad (little icon in task bar), and is exactly the same thing as in the pics in 1st post.

Any other ideas?

 

[TheMatt]

The only thing I can think of is that the Windows installation got slightly altered in some way and it is just not successfully installing the new drivers. If you really want to get it working, you can try a repair install with a retail XP disk if you have one.

I am moving you to Windows XP Support so you can get more help there.