Windows 10 touchpad gestures no longer working as expected (XPS 13 9333)

Hi there! I have exactly the same problems (gestures on Windows 10 don't work as expected anymore; with Windows 8 this functionality worked perfect, though) on my Dell XPS 13 (9333). Could you please describe all the steps you did to fix it in more details? Thanks in advance.

Sure.

Download the latest Synaptic Touchpad driver from their website at:

Do a search for "synaptics touchpad drivers" and it will probably be the top link that pops up. I would have posted it here, but everytime I do, it gets replace by a big "box" by the sites auto-editor. 

You'll need to pick the right one as I see two listed for Windows 10. 

- Windows 10 PS/2 and SMBus Devices v19.0.19.1

- Windows 10 I2C Devices v19.0.19.1

For my laptop (and most laptops) its the PS/2-SMBus version. I also noticed that they've posted a more update version than the one I downloaded and installed, so things may have changed regarding this issue on the disappearing "3-finger swipe".

After downloading, install it. Restart your PC. Play with it a bit, including putting your PC to sleep a few times to see if the 3-finger swipe breaks. If it does:

- Right-click on the Windows icon.

- Select Task Manager

- Click on the Services tab

- Scroll down to the SynTPEnhService

- Right-click on that and select "Open Services"

- Scroll down that new list to SynTPEnh Caller Service

- Select "Stop"

- Test your trackpad for proper functionality.

- If all is working well and your 3-finger swipe is now working, Change the "Startup type" from "Automatic" to "Disabled".

That's it. Play with it for a while. Restart your pc and do a little more testing by putting the PC to sleep and ensure that it's working properly.

If it doesn't work after all that, I don't have any other ideas at this point other than to continue hounding your PC manufacturer to demand a fix from Synaptics. It's clearly their problem that needs to be addressed.

'Coronahgg' gave a good clue in suggesting registry settings to change that might fix the touchpad issue. In my own experimentation I believe I have come across the problem; un-deleted registry entries from different driver parts/versions!

Be warned, don't mess with this stuff if you don't understand exactly what you are doing, you can seriously mess up your machine!

Before doing anything in the Registry, I do recommend exporting a backup first, at least of this folder; "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Synaptics". In the Registry Editor, under this heading: "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Synaptics\SynTP"  you may see several sub-folders. For example; "NGIPS2LegacyPS2",  "TouchPadPS2TM2382", and "TouchPadSMB2cTM2382". I simply deleted these two: "TouchPadPS2TM2382", and "TouchPadSMB2cTM2382" leaving "Install" and "NGIPS2LegacyPS2" in place, restarted, and hey-presto; I have the normal three finger gestures back! 

I have restarted several times, and 'slept' and 'hibernated' a couple of times each as well and all still seems to work.

I don't know what added functionality might be contained under the two folders I deleted, or what particular machines they might be tailored to, but I did  save the backup of the registry folder; "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Synaptics" so if things do end up going sour I can always revert to what it was before, when it wasn't working... ;)

If you didn't understand the instructions, you probably don't want to be touching this kind of fix anyway. As I said above, you can mess up your computer all too easily messing with the registry!

Hope this helps!

Polley

Thank you so much guys for such detailed step-by-step guides! I will definitely try to follow your solutions. Thanks againg. Cheers ;)

Can you explain the steps on how to do this, I couldn't find UseCustomGUI in registry, not sure what to look under, not that experienced with the registry, plan to save a copy before changing. Thank you!!

Same problems here, killing the software doesn't work and reinstalling the driver only fixes it temporarily. I am in an Alienware 15 R2 and I just got it 4 days ago. 

An update to my prior post and possible fix.....

My suggestion of permanently stopping the "SynTPEnh Caller Service" in Services did not fix the problem. My Synaptic Trackpad still would randomly stop responding to 3-finger gestures after being put to sleep. Not always, but after a few sleep "cycles" it would fail 3-finger gestures. The interesting thing is that stopping and permanently disabling the "SynTPEnh Caller Service" did not seem to effect anything operationally. I've left it disabled under the theory that less things running in the background is always better. That being said, I occasionally try turning it back on as I try updated (or older) drivers to fix this annoyance.

I finally tried the latest driver from the Synaptics site, v19.0.12.98 (I was using the latest from my PC vendor's site). No real effect on the problem (thought the touchpad seems a bit less sensitive and slower when using it....maybe a "sensitivity" adjustment needs to be tweaked after updating?)

I was a little uncomfortable mucking with the Registry for a fix on this problem. What has worked for me for the last 2 weeks is a small batch file I created, based on numerous other postings on this same topic. It's not ideal, but it works and takes 2 seconds to run/fix the problem when 3-finger gestures stop. In fact, its become an autonomic response to double-click my batch file when the 3-finger swipe doesn't work after resuming from a sleep cycle. So give a try and post your results. Obviously Synaptics has GOT to address this but I'm not agonizing over it anymore, with this temporary and painless work around.

- Open a create a new "notepad" document on your desktop
- copy/paste the following code into it

@echo off
taskkill /IM SynTPEnh.exe /F
timeout /t 2
start "" "C:\Program Files\Synaptics\SynTP\SynTPEnh.exe"

- save the file to your desktop with a name like "Kill-Restart SynTPEnh"
- close the file and rename it from "Kill-Restart SynTPEnh.txt" to "Kill-Restart SynTPEnh.bat"

You now have a batch file you can double-click on when the problem occurs. It simply stops and restarts the SynTPEnh background task. That fixed it for me. Maybe it will work for you as well? BTW, make sure that the path to the SynTPEnh.exe file on your system is the same and modify as appropriate, but that is the default that was set up by the Synaptics installer.

Thanks for that... BTW, can we force DELL to contact Synaptics to make a fix for that somehow?! I am just wondering do we have any chance to do so? Do they know about that problem users have all around the world?

I was in contact with Dell's support about the Dell touch-pad issues on windows 10. Working for 1 week and counting. I hope this works for everybody.

TL;DR

The issue appears to happen because Windows 10's overwrites Dell's driver automatically in the background. Deactive this feature and reinstall the latest driver provided by Dell fixed it for me.

My Situation:

Using the Notebook Inspiron 7537. The windows 10 gestures worked for a random/short time after installing the newest driver provided by Dell. The issue: Three-finger swipes open settings (down) or search (up) and changing the settings in Dell's Tool/Driver is ignored.

After testing several drivers and solutions from this thread and the web my touch-pad now works. Even after restarting, sleeping and waking through power-button or through closing and reopening the screen doesn't break the Windows 10 touch-pad gestures.

Solution:

1. Uninstall and remove the touch-pad driver you currently have installed. Either through software manager and or device manager.

2. Restart Windows

3. Deactivate Window's feature to automatically overwrite the touch-pad drivers with one of these tutorials/Tool: Ten Forums or How To Geek

4. Install Dell's Driver

5. Restart and cross your fingers this works for you aswell

... If I now can get my Microphone to record in a normal volume in Skype I'm happy with this Beta of a OS on my Dell.