Precision Touchpad Driver

[fkbreitl]

Maybe I should mention some other deficits (not related to the touchpad though):

- when the keyboard LED is turned on I hear a whining

- next to the left arrow key is the backslash instead of a function key, which can be annoying if you miss the arrow key and hit it accidentally

- battery life time is ~7 hours, where I read test with 8.5 hours and the HP specs saying up to 12 hours

Unfortunately this forum didn't let me add these sentences to my previous post. Maybe it was to long or there are other limitations...

[beninark]

Thanks for the response. Hopefully they worked out some of the kinks between yours being constructed and mine.

[fkbreitl]

I have good news regarding the touchpad driver:

After I let Windows 10 "Search automatically for updated driver online" for exampel through the

Device Manger => Mice and other pointing devices => Synaptics SMBus ClickPad => Driver => Update Driver

it installed version 19.3.31.31 (date 16/8/2017).

This version provides many ClickPad Settings (tab in mouse options) to configure.

So I was able to decativate Pinch Zoom and all the other MultiFinger gestures, as well as many other features.

As it turned out these settings were interferring with the Windows precision touchpad settings and preventing them from taking effect. Now scrolling, the pointer speed and the overall behavior of the touchpad is quite nice.

So HP urgently needs to provide this driver online for the Spectre x360 and also ship it with this laptop.

[jmanes]

Other concerns not touch pad related should go in a different thread. This isn't a general complaint thread. Let's stay on topic.

[youngfinn]

Would any of you guys give me a quick rundown of what to do (as of april '18) to install the drivers and what to avoid afterwards?

i'm really interested in the precision drivers, but I read about some people who ended up with broken touchpads afterwards (also in other threads and posts). That was a couple of months (and updates) back though, so I don't really know what to look out for.

Is that really possible or can you always revert to some kind of synaptics driver and restore your touchpad. I'm kind of afraid to try this out since my Spectre is only a year old and was way to expensive to break it with something like this 😄

As far as I know I have to:

1. download synaptic precision driver (e.g. the X1 Carbon 5th gen) from lenovo website.

2. (Uninstall current driver first?) manually update my Synaptic Touchpad (via device manager) with the autorun.inf from the lenovo driver

3. restart

4. disable all settings in the Synaptic ClickPad menu otherwise the old gestures overlap with the new ones.

5. done? (anything else?)

I'm asking because I also have the following problem with Synaptics and I hope to get rid of it with Windows Precision.

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Video-Display-and-Touch/Spectre-x360-Synaptics-Touchpad-snapp...

Of course I don’t know if that will fix it but I hope so.

In General I would like the touchpad to be more like the one of a MacBook, since I had one before and it felt way better than the Spectre's.

The Precision touchpads I tried out at my local store felt very similar to those of apple.

Thank you

[fkbreitl]

Hello Youngfinn,

All I had to do was installing this driver

https://download.lenovo.com/pccbbs/mobiles/n1mgx14w.zip

by following this instruction

https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/20/16175682/enable-precision-drivers-on-synaptics-touchpads

I didn't have to unstiall the previous driver or disable driver updates.

Actullay after an update the latest driver got reinstalled but the touchpad remained recognized as presision touchpad.

[rick-s]

Unlocked for response.

[fkbreitl]

It seem to me that the new Synaptics TouchPad-Driver (Windows 10 v1803)
19.5.10.75 Rev.C from 9. Nov. 2018 from  https://support.hp.com/de-de/drivers/selfservice/hp-spectre-13-ae000-x360-convertible-pc/16779579 made it also into the Windows updates and when it gets installed, my mouse pointer disappears. Rolling back didn't work at first and didn't fix the problem immediately. But after uninstalling the driver serveral times I finally got the mouse pointer back, but it wasn't recognized as precision touchpad anymore.

With the previous instructions (https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/20/16175682/enable-precision-drivers-on-synaptics-touchpads) I was not able to get the precision touchpad back. The touchpad worked again, but not as precision touchpad. So I had to restore my system from a backup and make sure that this touchpad driver doesn't get installed following these instructions:

https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/disable-automatic-driver-downloads-on-windows-10

https://www.howtogeek.com/263851/how-to-prevent-windows-from-automatically-updating-specific-drivers...

Unfortunately the first did not prevent the driver installation. It seems like my no driver update setting was reset after one of the bigger upgrades (maybe to Win 10 version 1803).

The second solution prevented the driver from installing but after the Windows update the driver had disapeard and an old windows default driver was used which did not suppurt the multi finger scrolling etc.

So I had to restore and upate the laptop again. But now rolling back the driver from 19.5.10.75 Rev.C to 19.3.31.31 Rev.B? from Aug 16,2017 got my touchpad back to the old state and working again.

After some search it seems like there is way to tell Windows not to download and try to install a device driver which is not working.

[fkbreitl]

Hi Thecrs,

Thanks for your post and sharing your experience and solution after me getting the admin to open the topic again.

I think I am running on Rev.B of the HP touchpad driver version 19.3.31.31 which apears from Aug 16, 2017 according to the device manager and it works after rolling back to it after the Rev.C update happend through Windows.

Frank

[zhenya_shubin]

Great instructions by Thecrs (and, thanks for the tags, easily findable). Worked on my machine (see my tags) with the following mods:

- the software from step 1 from the instruction didn't show any 19.5.x updates (hence, I was unable to "hide" them);

- uninstall the touchpad driver (in the same way as in step 3 from the instruction);

- reboot. Windows auto-installs driver 19.3.31.31. In a few minutes, Windows prompts to reboot again to complete the installation;

- reboot again. Thereafter, touchpad does not work (suspect 19.5.x was rolled in somehow). But the driver shown in Device Manager remains 19.3.31.31;

- (I can't remember if I did this particular step at that stage or later. But to complete this step seems important:) go to Control Panel > Programs > Programs and Features and delete a program starting with "Symantec" and showing its version as 19.5.x. (even though you may see only 19.3.x in Device Manager, there might be a conflicting standalone 19.5.x software in Programs and Features);

- only then I was able to see and "hide" 19.5.x in step 1 from the instruction. Next steps were easy to implement.