Studio 1558 - Windows 10 - touchpad settings won't open

Question

Apologies if this is the wrong board - the machine is an old (pre-XPS) Studio 1558 laptop and there seems to be no generic laptop board. Since Studios are now in the XPS line, I thought this was the best compromise.

Studio 1558
Windows 10 Home 1903 64-bit
touchpad software is 14.0.2.0 (Aug 2009) - the last available in downloads under the machine's service tag

I upgraded the Studio 1558 from Windows 7 to Windows 10. The touchpad driver appears to be installed and working ... i.e. SynTPEnh.exe and SynTPHelper.exe are running and edge scrolling, "middle" button, etc. still work as I had them configured ... but somehow tapping has been (re)enabled and I will lose my mind if I can't turn it off again.

The touchpad tray icon is active, but the settings (properties) GUI won't open. It won't open from the control panel mouse settings applet either - the touchpad tab is present, but the link to open the separate touchpad settings does not work.

I hunted down the "DellTpad" executable and tried to run it manually with no success (even as administrator). In the Task manager I can see that it exits immediately after starting. It ran under Windows 7 but I can't find any "compatibility" settings that will make it run under Windows 10.

I tried starting Win10 in Safe mode, but I discovered that mouse/touchpad settings are not available at all in Safe mode. And DellTPad doesn't run there either.

I located the Synaptics registry entries, but there is no setting that obviously (dis)enables tapping. There are numerous settings for multi-finger taps (all zeroed), but nothing obvious for single finger tapping.

Any ideas? I am a little afraid to try generic Synaptics drivers because if it doesn't work I may not be able to reinstall - or reactivate - the current (old) drivers. I have seen reports that Win10 has issues restoring from save points.

If someone knows the correct registry setting(s), I am perfectly comfortable doing it manually ... but it would be nicer if I can get the GUI working.

Thanks,

George

jfdomega · Answer

Hi George, did you figure it out . I have the same problem. Cannot figure it out, I’m going nuts been at it for hours now. Heeelp all the best regards john

gneuner2 · Answer

Hi John,

I was never able to make the 1558 specific touchpad software work with Win10. My eventual solution was to get a driver from Synaptics. It took a while to figure out which one would work.

I don't have a link to give you (sorry), but the driver I ended up using is 16.3.10.6 for the SMBus (PS/2). It's technically for Win7, but it seems to work well.

Hope this helps,

George

XPS

Studio 1558 - Windows 10 - touchpad settings won't open

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