Windows 8

[ChaseCarp]

I absolutely agree - that is why software is released in Beta!

BTW, I was able to resolve the issue on my TouchSmart 600.  I noticed two things.  First, the edge of the screen where the pixels normally are for the charms bar were difficult to get to because of the plastic border on the TouchSmart. Second, My screen wasn't calibrated well. In the center, it worked fine, but on the edges, the touch became offset from my finger towards the center of the screen pretty drastically, making the first problem even worse.  Here's what I did.

1. Check for updates.  Install the optional ones especially the onese for NVidia.
2. Right click on the desktop, there is a NVidia Control Panel app.  *note - when I upgraded from win7, this app wouldn't launch.  After a fresh install it did.  I'm assuming if you uninstalled it and reinstalled you would have the same behavior.
3. Select the checkbox to resize the desktop.  Move both the vertical and horizontal size sliders one notch to the left. 
4. Go to the start screen.  Type "touch".  Select the setting for "Calibrate screen for touch"
5. Follow the instructions.  You may have to use the "reset" button in the app to delete previous calibration info. 

After doing this, your desktop will be slightly smaller than the max size, but it works really well.

Hope this helps!

[EUnpingco]

I emailed NextWindow about the driver issue for the 520.  They seem more supportive.  I replied and will let you all know what they say. Hopefully they can give additional troubleshooting steps or provide a working driver.

From: Support Team (NextWindow) [support@nextwindow.com]
Sent: Monday, March 12, 2012 4:28 PM
To: XXXXXXXXX
Subject: RE: Windows 8 support

Hi XXXXX,

All our current drivers should work with Win8 except for the 1900 line of drivers which I think will only work with single touch.

Regards

---------------------------------

My response:  

Thanks for the response. I did several things to try to get the drivers that are available online via HP and on your site. Nothing I did would get the drivers to work.

My issue: after installing Windows 8 Customer Preview (Beta), the Touchscreen Driver becomes disabled on the HP TouchSmart 520. HP is saying they don't support the drivers. All Touchsmart 520 owners I have come across on the Internet have the same issue with the drivers not installing.

Multiple troubleshooting attempts that failed:

1) WindowsUpdate did not find the drivers.

2) Downloading and running the HPTouchSmart 520 driver executible fails complaining that the OS not being Windows 7

3) Doing #2 but with windows compatability mode also failed (same error message)

4) Manually extracting the touchscreen drivers from the Windows 7 installation resulted in "Device failed to start"

5) Manually extracting the touchscreen drivers from the HP TouchSmart 520 driver executible (from the HP support site) resulted in the same error above.

6) Downloading and installing the NextWindow drivers from the nextwindow support site also failed with the same error from #4 "Device failed to start error 1010".

7) Did the above under a new OS installation; same issues

8) Did the above under an OS installation upgrade; same issues

So I tried the HP Touchsmart 610 drivers since the HP Touchsmart 610 was a machine that was reported to having working touchscreen in Windows 8 Customer Preview. I had to manually extract the driver from the HP driver executible. This driver (NextWindow Voltron) installed successfully but still the touchscreen does not work. Very frustrating.

[skate123]

I have an HP Touch Smart 320.  I blew out Windows 7 and did a fresh install with the Windows 8 Consumer Preview.  At first, I also had the same issues...I couldn't get the touch screen to work.  I also tried some of the similar things shared here.

Here's what worked.

Go to your Device Manager, you will see an error symbol next to the Touch Drivers.  Right click and select Uninstall.

Then, follow the steps here found on the Microsoft Site in the Windows 8 Consumer Preview Forum:

Please check Windows Update to make sure that you have downloaded and installed all of the latest updates, including optional updates.

 To check for driver updates, 

1. At the Start screen, type Windows Update.Click or tap Settings on the right side of the screen, and then selectInstall optional updates from the left results
2. When the Windows Update control panel opens, click on “Check for Updates” on the top left corner to receive a fresh list of updates

***I went to Start Screen (Windows 8 desktop), used the search option and went under Control Panel.  In Control Panel, select System and Security.  There you will find Windows Update.  As soon as I selected that it showed me a driver update was available.  I selected it, installed and it works great!

[EUnpingco]

Works!!

Could have sworn I did this weeks ago.  Maybe the updated drivers just got distributed? 

Thank you very much for giving the instructions to resolve the issue. 

[rogerloew]

It worked! A new touchscreen driver had been added.  I didn't recognize the name, but it downloaded and installed on my Touchsmart 520 and now the touchscreen works on Windows 8.  Now I have a lot of playing around to do as I find Windows 8 still has some bugs in how touchscreen works (like no way to call up the right side screen to leave a screen) but that is not a touchscreen problem, it is a program problem.  Thanks you so much.  And also thanks to whoever put up the new touchscreen driver.

[mreuss]

No, it doesn't. Try to install release preview (as I did) and you're back to not having a Touchscreen anymore.

I find this hard to believe. HP: you suck.

[waded]

BTW, I was able to resolve the issue on my TouchSmart 600.  I noticed two things.  First, the edge of the screen where the pixels normally are for the charms bar were difficult to get to because of the plastic border on the TouchSmart. Second, My screen wasn't calibrated well. In the center, it worked fine, but on the edges, the touch became offset from my finger towards the center of the screen pretty drastically, making the first problem even worse.  Here's what I did.

1. Check for updates.  Install the optional ones especially the onese for NVidia.
2. Right click on the desktop, there is a NVidia Control Panel app.  *note - when I upgraded from win7, this app wouldn't launch.  After a fresh install it did.  I'm assuming if you uninstalled it and reinstalled you would have the same behavior.
3. Select the checkbox to resize the desktop.  Move both the vertical and horizontal size sliders one notch to the left. 
4. Go to the start screen.  Type "touch".  Select the setting for "Calibrate screen for touch"
5. Follow the instructions.  You may have to use the "reset" button in the app to delete previous calibration info. 

After doing this, your desktop will be slightly smaller than the max size, but it works really well.

Hope this helps!

---

Thanks for the tip, that's a good one! The screen-edge gestures in Windows 8 were definitely designed for the newer all-in-ones with 23" capacitive instead of 23" optical touch screen (so, they don't have the raised plastic border that the optical sensors need.) I hadn't considered that there might be a solution in resizing the screen.

[gpatmac]

Thank you very much. Worked great for my TS320.