Dave-H

Wow, thank you so much @jaclaz! That spreadsheet must have involved a huge amount of work! OK, I will try your "proposed approach" and report back. I will try to give as much detail as I can on what the result is. Cheers, Dave.

OK, both Windows 8.1 and Windows XP are completely cleared of all touchpad drivers now, at least as far as I can see, both files and registry entries. The touchpad is just using the basic Microsoft PS/2 mouse driver on both of them. I have driver versions 11.5.0.9 and 11.5.20.3 ready to go, and the rest hidden away. 11.5.20.3 was one of the two that I've had working on 8.1 (the other being 15.14.4.1). Off to bed now, but ready to take up the fray again tomorrow! Cheers, Dave.

Thanks for the heads up!

OK, I won't delete any of the downloaded installers I've still got. I'll put those that I doubt we'll be using again away in a backup folder which I can delete when we're done.

Even the Asus Smart Gesture versions which are based on MSI and CAB files?

Thanks @jaclaz. I'm sorry if I haven't been detailed enough in my failure reports, but apart from saying that I can't change any settings that actually change the behaviour of the touchpad, and reporting what Device Manager and the Mouse Properties tab (if it's present) are reporting as to the status of the device, I don't see what else I can say. I'm sorry if I'm being thick, but it would definitely be a great help if you could tell be exactly what feedback you need. I will now uninstall all the touchpad drivers from XP and 8.1, and make sure there's no traces of them left on the system, get rid of all the installation files I've been collecting again, which is getting very confusing, and I'll just keep the 11.5.0.9 and 11.5.20.3 versions of the Elan driver. I'm sure you're right that there is certainly no point in pursuing any of the later Asus Smart Gesture drivers. Unlike the earlier versions which seem to be just customised versions of the Elan drivers, the later ones seem to have been completely repackaged. Thanks, Dave.

Back again! I've been working with @daniel_kvia PM, and I was doing other things yesterday (other computer problems, but I won't bore you with them here! ). I want to thank Daniel publicly for all his help, we tried several more options, but unfortunately ultimately didn't get anywhere. At one point we had the same version of Asus Smart Gesture apparently installed happily on 8.1 and XP, but of course it worked on 8.1 but not XP. One background program running on 8.1 (QuickGesture.exe) would not run on XP, and as far as I could see that was the only obvious difference. That may have been a fatal difference of course! So, @jaclazand everyone, where from here?

Thanks!

Sorry! There are two copies, one in D:\Program Files\Asus\Asus Smart Gesture\AsTPCenter\x86, and another one (presumably 64 bit) in D:\Program Files\Asus\Asus Smart Gesture\AsTPCenter\x64.

OK, SmartGesture_Win7_64_Z1027 appeared to install OK on Windows XP, which is a first as the MSI installers have always failed and rolled back before. However, on boot I'm now getting "The procedure entry point ChangeWindowMessageFilter could not be located in the dynamic link library USER32.DLL", from QuickGesture.exe, followed by "The procedure entry point PowerSetActiveScheme could not be located in the dynamic link library POWERPROF.DLL" from AsusTPCenter.exe. The Asus control panel will run, and the settings can be changed, but again this does not actually change the behaviour of the touchpad.

I did try that driver, it also didn't work on 8.1. I didn't try it on XP, but I can if you like! Your new download, should I try it on XP or 8.1? We must be careful not to get confused here. Recently we've been concentrating on finding drivers that work on 8.1 that can then possibly be ported to XP. I think if a driver won't work on 8.1, there's very little hope of it working on XP.

OK, I've downloaded the files, but it's just the bare AsusTP.sys installation, with no control panel files. I've installed many versions of that on XP and they all appear to install and work fine, but they do not allow the behaviour of the touchpad to be changed, even when the registry entries are added. Without the control files also running, I'm afraid this does not work, and that's been the whole problem, finding a version of AsusTP.sys or ETD.sys that will actually interface properly with the hardware, and accept input from the touchpad control panels, either using a UI or by directly editing the registry. I've only found three versions out of the dozen or so driver versions I've tried (two Asus and one Elan) which actually even work on Windows 8.1, and none of course which will work on XP.

Thanks for the thoughts, but I think (hope) that it's very unlikely that the trackpad is physically faulty. With the drivers that work on Windows 8.1, it works absolutely fine. I'm afraid that I'm not so wedded to XP on this machine as I am on my main desktop. If I had to do an OS update, it would be to Vista 32 rather than XP 64. I still have the outstanding problem of a proper graphics driver, even if we do get the touchpad working properly, and I do have a graphics driver that I'm reasonably confident will work with the hardware on Vista, XP 64 I'm not so sure about!

OK, I tried that. It apparently installed fine on 8.1, the mouse says it's a Elan Input Device, with driver 11.5.20.3. There is no extra tab on the Mouse Properties. ETDCtrl.exe ins running, and the "Elan Service" but nothing else. The Asus control panels don't run.

Thanks very much @daniel_k! The second one looks like it's 64 bit only, so that wouldn't be any good, I need a 32 bit driver. I will check out the first one though, it's not clear what architecture that is.

Version 10.5.9.0 from the Japanese site, exactly the same I'm afraid! I could try them all on XP, but I'm not hopeful that if they won't work on 8.1 that they will somehow on XP. I think your "Frankendriver" approach is the only way to go now, in the hope of finding a driver which installs on XP, and uses the hardware correctly, by combining elements of two drivers!

No joy with that one I'm afraid. It's a standard Elan driver rather than an Asus customised Elan driver, and again produces a tab in the Mouse Properties which misidentifies the touchpad as a "Standard PS/2 Mouse", which has never worked. I am very puzzled as to why these drivers don't even work on 8.1, I'm sure that it's because they are not identifying the hardware correctly, even when it's apparently in the INF file.

Thanks, I'll give that one a try! I did notice the batch file in the previous driver and tried using it to see if it would log what it did on the install. Sadly the resulting log was very short indeed, and really only confirmed that the install was successful.

Trying the same driver on Windows 8.1, ETDCtrl.exe is running in the background, and so are ETDCtrlHelper.exe and ETDGesture.exe, whatever that it. However, the driver still isn't working, even on 8.1! It looks exactly the same as on XP, with an inactive icon in the system tray. The Asus control panel still works (I now see that the Windows 8 version has an extra "Metro UI Gesture" tab) and on 8.1 the demo videos play, whereas on XP they don't. Again the settings are remembered, but don't actually change the state of the touchpad. Very strange, surely this driver should work on Windows 8.1, unless it's Windows 8 only, and not 8.1, which I wouldn't have thought was very likely?!

OK, I tried the latest find on XP. I was really encouraged when an Asus Smart Gesture icon appeared in the system tray on XP for the first time! Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to be active. It installed as an Elan PS/2 Port Smart-Pad, which looked very hopeful. There is no extra tab on the Mouse Properties, but I think that's normal for Asus Smart Gesture. The Asus control panel (which should come up when the system tray icon is double clicked, but doesn't) runs fine and I can change the settings and they are remembered, but again it doesn't actually change the behaviour of the touchpad. Trying an update from Device Manager also offered "Elan PS/2 Port Input Device", which also looked hopeful, but "updating" to that produced the same result. This is certainly the closest yet though! ETDCtrl.exe is running happily in the background, but ETDCtrlHelper.exe isn't, and I think it should be, it is running on 8.1. If I try to run it, I get "The procedure entry point UnregisterPowerSettingNotification could not be located in the dynamic link library USER32.dll", so it looks as if there is a Windows XP compatibility problem there.

Wow, you really are "The Finder" @jaclaz! I will give that driver a try and let you know.

Well not surprisingly, setup.exe said it wasn't a valid win32 application on XP. Trying an install with Device Manger went through the motions, but just produced a corrupted or missing driver error 39. What a shame it's a version 11 driver. While it's amazing to have found a version 11 driver that will even install on 8.1 (none of the others I tried did) if it were a version 10 driver it would probably work on XP! I think it was between version 10 and version 11 that they changed the executables to no longer be XP compatible.

ETDsimpleui.exe and ETDsimpleUI_win8.exe both work fine, I can change the settings using them and they work and stick. I'm not sure what the difference between them is, they look exactly the same to me! DellTouchpad.exe I don't have any more I'm afraid, I junked it with most of the many other collected driver versions when I was going to give up. I had so many I was getting very confused as to what was what! I don't doubt that it would have worked as well though.

OK I tried that version, it took ages to install, but it eventually did, and it works! It appears to be an earlier version of Asus Smart Gesture, packed like a normal Elan driver, whereas the later versions look completely different in file structure, with a cab file and msi file. It has no visible control panel, unlike later versions that put an icon in the Windows Control Panel, and there is no tab on the Mouse Properties. The only way of invoking its control panel seems to be by double clicking the system tray icon. Surely this won't install on XP?!

Thanks, I will give that a try! I was experimenting with installing version 15 without some of its files, to see if it was possible to get a working driver with a bare minimum of files present, but I wasn't getting very far! I'll let you know what happens with this one.