Aspire V3-771G - Elantech touchpad driver bugs

Hello,

I noticed something strange with my touchpad, namely, when I'm moving my mouse and press any key on the keyboard (except Shift, Ctrl and Alt), the cursor stops, and I have to lift my finger and touch down again to resume moving it.

I also noticed that tap-and-hold dragging doesn't work well, sometimes I have to do it 3 times over, and end up clicking the physical button, which I never had to do on any laptop.

This happens with Windows 8 and the newest Elantech drivers downloaded from the Acer website.

This isn't normal behaviour, so I went and replaced the Elantech driver with the generic "PS/2 Compatible Mouse" Microsoft driver. After that moving the mouse worked as expected, keys didn't stop the cursor in it's tracks, and tap-and-hold dragging worked great, but vertical scrolling using the side strip stopped working, as well as tapping with two fingers (for middle click).

In the end, I reverted to the Elantech driver, but it's driving me crazy Smiley Sad It makes working with graphics design software a nightmare...

Can we count on a driver update to fix these bugs? Or, does anyone know of an alternate driver for this touchpad that works as expected? I don't care for gestures and all those other extras, but I expect the scrolling and two finger tapping to work.

Accepted answers

mbinic

Hello, after lots of frustration with this touchpad the bugs seem to have finally been resolved and I also found a way to configure a couple of hidden options and thought I'd share them here, so others can benefit as well.

Start up RegEdit (Windows key + R), and go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Elantech\SmartPad. If you're afraid of messing with the registry, you can back up the key and restore it afterwards if you run into any trouble (or simply reinstall the driver).

Here's some of the configurations:

1. Two finger tap = middle click: set the value of Tap_Two_Finger_Enable to 1 and Tap_Two_Finger to 2

2. Three finger tap = right click: set the value of Tap_Three_Finger_Enable to 1 and Tap_Three_Finger to 1

These are the two that I was missing ever since I got my laptop, and now I'm finally completely happy with it Smiley Happy You can experiment with other options as well, and please let us know if you find anything interesting.

---

Please not that this works for me with the Windows 8.1 touchpad driver downloaded from the Acer driver download page, I didn't test other operating systems (except Kubuntu 12+, which works this way out of the box).

All comments

mbinic

No replies... Any hints on the driver update? Anyway, it might be useful to know that the touchpad driver under Kubuntu 12.10 functions as expected, and even better than the one on Windows. Even the 3-finger-tap works (yes, the hardware supports it) Smiley Very Happy

I don't know if the driver source code is available, but if it is it would be great if it were ported to Windows. I'll give it a try if I find some free time, been wanting to learn that for quite a while...

mbinic

Hello, after lots of frustration with this touchpad the bugs seem to have finally been resolved and I also found a way to configure a couple of hidden options and thought I'd share them here, so others can benefit as well.

Start up RegEdit (Windows key + R), and go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Elantech\SmartPad. If you're afraid of messing with the registry, you can back up the key and restore it afterwards if you run into any trouble (or simply reinstall the driver).

Here's some of the configurations:

1. Two finger tap = middle click: set the value of Tap_Two_Finger_Enable to 1 and Tap_Two_Finger to 2

2. Three finger tap = right click: set the value of Tap_Three_Finger_Enable to 1 and Tap_Three_Finger to 1

These are the two that I was missing ever since I got my laptop, and now I'm finally completely happy with it Smiley Happy You can experiment with other options as well, and please let us know if you find anything interesting.

---

Please not that this works for me with the Windows 8.1 touchpad driver downloaded from the Acer driver download page, I didn't test other operating systems (except Kubuntu 12+, which works this way out of the box).

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