Synaptics touchpad drivers and Windows Vista
It seems a number of folks have been having problems finding touchpad drivers for Windows Vista. I recently started trying out Vista on a laptop at home which happens to have a Synaptics touchpad. Without the drivers and its enhancement programs, using the touchpad can be problematic. Eventually I found out that the latest Windows 2K/XP version of Synaptics' drivers from https://www.synaptics.com/support/drive.cfm works fine in Vista (at least on builds 5456+). Some of their older versions like the one that came with my laptop doesn't work in Vista but the on their site does, so perhaps they fixed the problems in the latest releases.
The other major touchpad vendor is Alps Electric. Unfortunately I cannot seem to find any publicly available driver downloads on their site. Hopefully their XP drivers also work on Vista. Anyone knows?
P.S. On build 5472 there is a bug in the built-in unzip which might cause problems with zipped downloads. Use a third party unzip tool like WinZip etc.
Comments
Anonymous
November 22, 2006
I have RC2 on my laptop, and it just received an optional update that installed the synaptic drivers (V6.2) and their tool for configuring it.Anonymous
January 19, 2007
I have a Dell Inspiron 9300 and installed Vista, the only problem is the scrolling doesn't work on the Alps touchpad. I searched the Dell driver site for downloads and found this one. http://support.us.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&releaseid=R140031&formatcnt=1&libid=0&fileid=187207 However, my system isn't listed as being support so I am not sure if it would work or not.Anonymous
January 29, 2007
You might find this interesting. After reading earlier post I decided to install ALPS touch pad driver from the dell site(link above) over on to my compaq presario R3200 laptop running windows vista and it works great. Scroll, gasteures, etc...Anonymous
February 10, 2007
Donnie you saved my life.. i spent HOURS looking for a way to get the scrolling on my touchpad back.Anonymous
February 15, 2007
Not so much luck for Toshiba! I have a G20 and the company is basically telling me that I'm stuck and on my own... they don't seem eagre to help or release drivers... surely the software is essentially the same to get the touchpad/buttons/video card working? Anyone have any luck using any drivers to make Toshiba controls work?Anonymous
March 13, 2007
hi i have a compaq R3000 and i cannot get the scroll pad to work ... can anyone helpAnonymous
April 04, 2007
Same here. I have an HP nx9110 upgraded to Vista, and the Synaptic Touchpad scroll feature doesn't work anymore. I tried upgrading the drivers, still no luck.Anonymous
April 04, 2007
I installed the Dell driver on my Inspiron and voila!!! I have scroll capability again. Thanks a million my friend.Anonymous
April 08, 2007
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April 26, 2007
dude i m using HP 2214tu. Vista came preloaded. the problem i face is that wen i put my system on hibernate and come back the scroller of my synaptics touchpad doesn't work. but we i restart the windows t works fine!Anonymous
June 25, 2007
I installed windows vista on my dell lattitude d620, now I can not control my touch pad on my laptop when I plug in my PnP mouse, It has become so disruptive, it in terfers with my typing for my school work. Vista completely wipe out my control of the touch pad, I already adjusted the Bios setting, but it just list the ps/2 mouse, not the PnP mouse. Where do I find the drivers for the control of the touch pad when I plug In my PnP mouse.Anonymous
July 03, 2007
I was told by Dell to install the Alps driver for the cursor hopping thats happening in vista. Unfortunately install keeps failing.Anonymous
July 14, 2007
ALPS touchpad driver does not work in Vista. It gets a program compatibility issueAnonymous
July 25, 2007
the touch pad is alive again!!!!! thanks!!! inspiron 6000. vista ultimateAnonymous
September 07, 2007
Okay, I'm not a whizz at computer stuff so please bear with me!! I've recently bought a Toshiba Satellite L30-11D Laptop which has a Synaptics Touchpad and came installed with Windows Vista. I keep getting a bubble come up saying that 'the advanced features of the touchpad have been disabled as the driver has detected another pointing device.' I don't have another pointing device!!! This is becoming more frequent; to the point that I have 5mins before I have tab my way around my laptop, which is simply a nightmare! Has this happened to anyone else & how can I fix it?! Many many thanks! Kate xAnonymous
September 07, 2007
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September 13, 2007
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September 29, 2007
I have the same problem on an Acer 4233 WRT hibernation in Vista and that the synaptics scroll stops working. It appears as though the driver crashes as although the icon is still in the taskbar and you can mouse over to get the a tool tip, the driver properties wont show if you double click on it or try and look at the properties through control pannel/Anonymous
September 30, 2007
My alps touchpad hasn't scrolled for a long time either. I have inspiron 9300 and update every week. I checked that driver download and it said I already had that version and asked if I wanted to install anyway. I didn't. However should I?Anonymous
October 24, 2007
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December 21, 2007
I have a Toshiba Satellite A135-S4527, off late i have seen that the touch pad does not scroll as it used to do. To enhance the speed i had disabled a few start programs etc...now i don't know if that is the reason. My laptop came with Windows Vista preloaded and i remember it had a synaptic driver, coz i used to get messages in between some of the programs...pls tell me what to do?should i install something to re-use the touchpad scrolling(i can not scroll up and down but can do simple pad movements....Anonymous
December 29, 2007
(notlikeontv@hotmail.com) sorry to be off topic, but my inspiron 9300 touch pad has problems, when my laptop starts up, the mouse pad works but no butons work, nore does clicking the pad itself. after hibernating the laptop and re open it, the left button starts but the right doesnt. i have overcome this by making the top left corner of the pad act as the right press. could someone e-mail me with suggestions... if any. thanks a lot... edward - notlikeontv@hotmail.comAnonymous
January 19, 2008
Finnaly i found people with the same problems, also it isn't in my own languages. I'm from the Netherlands so i hope you all will understand me. I have a Toshiba Satelite A110-156 Since February 2007. A few months later i installed with a BIOS Upgrade Windows Vista Home Premium. Since then my touchpad failled to scroll. the driver on the Toshiba site isn't an sollution. I have to agree with three pop up ( security ) before de scrolling workes. I'm at work now, but wil try de above drivers ( also those from Dell )an hope that de problem is solved then. I wanna tell you that Toshiba Helpdesk will not help me, i called them wat costs me E30,00 and they could only say that they didn't reconiged the problem en that they will call me back, what they never did till now. Hopefully the problem will be solved for all of us.!Anonymous
January 23, 2008
We were having the same scrolling problem with our Toshiba Satellite with Synaptics touchpad and VISTA. We downloaded the ALPS driver from the Toshiba website, just because nothing else would work (including no help from the helpdesk) and I'll be darned it works great now! Hope this helps.Anonymous
January 30, 2008
Was having the same problem with our new Compaq Presario running Vista with a Synaptics touchpad. I used the ALPS driver at first but really wanted to get back the advanced options. I downloaded the Compag Synaptics driver here: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareList?os=2093&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&product=3462023&lang=en uninstalled the current ALPS driver, restarted in Safe Mode and installed the Synaptics. Everything seems to be fine now and I have all my advanced options back!! Cheers!! PhilAnonymous
February 07, 2008
Thanks for that link to the Alps touchpad driver on Dell's site. I upgraded my inspiron 9200 to Vista Business and lost the scrolling capability on my touchpad, as the only driver installed was for a generic PS2 mouse. When I went to Dell's site and put in my service tag, it only listed the old Alps driver which I had on disc which was not compatible with Vista. Your link worked like a charm. Thanks Donnie!Anonymous
February 21, 2008
I got toshiba with the same problem for some reason the toshiba server are so slow taking hours just to downloadAnonymous
March 01, 2008
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March 09, 2008
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March 22, 2008
hey,try uninstalling the driver in the device settings menu. Choose to "show hidden" and look under mice and other pointing devices. or go into program files and delete the synaptics hardware. My keyboard and my touchpad on my aspire did not work and doing this solved both problems...Anonymous
April 09, 2008
I have a Toshiba laptop w/synaptics mouse. It seems ever since Microsoft did their upgrade my mouse has become erratic. I've tried uninstalling & reinstalling, updating, I even restored my computer with the factory CD. AND... again, same problem. Erratic mouse. I click on X to close & it minimizes, I click on a link & it closes the window. Toshiba wants me to send the computer back via mail. Synaptics, of course, won't help. Microsoft won't help. This is an absolute nightmare.Anonymous
April 22, 2008
I lost the scrolling features of the Synaptics touchpad when I installed SP1 for Vista. I have tried loading the latest driver from Synaptice but still cannot get the features back. More to the point I cannot turn off the wretched tapping feature.Anonymous
May 20, 2008
PingBack from http://noelle.freemedianewstoday.info/alpstouchpaddriver.htmlAnonymous
June 04, 2008
Hi Ken, Yes I recently installed Vista SP1 and now the latest Synaptics driver crashes every so often, killing my scrolling. Very annoying. Should have avoided SP1...Anonymous
June 12, 2008
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July 28, 2008
Thought people might find this interesting. Toshiba Qosimo F45, Vista from the factory. It locked up, and ever since, no touchpad. However... and here is the fun part... booting to Linux or BartPE (WinXP PE essentially) and the touchpad works perfectly. If I boot to Vista from the HD OR if I boot to a Vista PE, the touchpad will NOT work. How is THAT for funky...Anonymous
October 06, 2008
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January 13, 2009
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January 15, 2009
Short Fix: search for the file "SynTPEnh.exe", and just open this everytime the scroll stops working. You can also find the file in the task manager and open containing folder of whatever it's called.File locaiton or something.Anonymous
February 07, 2009
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February 17, 2009
I have the same problem with my Compaq Presario Laptop which is running Vista. Every now and then when I come back from Suspend or Hibernate I can't use either scroll pad. The only solution I have is to Ctrl Alt Del and then use the task manager to end the process SynTPstart.exe which is the file that starts up the touchpad. If you then search for that file and start it up again the pad works fine. Still a pain but much quicker than restarting the machine. There must be some issue that locks up the Synaptics program upon resume. You'll know you got the right file by looking at the synaptics tray icon. It should disappear and reappear during the process.Anonymous
May 01, 2009
I'm having problems with the magnification on my new Acer laptop. It's too sensitive and when I'm working it suddenly enlarges or becomes too small to see. I'd like to be able to read some instructions somewhere on how to use this touchpad.Anonymous
May 22, 2009
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June 15, 2009
PingBack from http://workfromhomecareer.info/story.php?id=1084Anonymous
July 14, 2009
I have a Toshiba L45-S7423 (Satelite). The touchpad was hit and miss for a while after start up but then would work fine. I used a bluetooth "thing" one time and now the touchpad and wireless mouse do not work! It doesn't even recognize the mouse if is connected with the usb cord...only when wireless. I cannot navigate well enough on the toshiba website to download a driver. Any suggestions?Anonymous
December 30, 2010
i had a problem with my laptop touch padAnonymous
March 20, 2011
HPAdvisor keeps sending update alerts on this; but I can't find it on my laptop programs. What gives" Is it called something else?