Dave-H

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.

Just tried again with version 15, and running the top level setup.exe again says it's installed, including a long "installing drivers" animation, but it doesn't ask for a reboot when it's finished, apparently correctly, and nothing seems to have actually changed at all on the machine, even after a reboot. If I then run the setup.exe in the x86 folder, it immediately goes to the "completed" screen, as presumably it thinks that the driver is already there. However there seems to be no way of uninstalling it. I guess I will have to install via Device Manager again and then uninstall it to do further tests. EDIT: The setup.exe in the x86 folder does exactly the same as the one in the top folder. Installing from scratch using Device Manager woks fine though, so it looks as if the setup files don't actually need to be run for a successful install. When using the update facility on Device Manager the INF offers "Elan Input Device", and when I try to install it it says that Windows cannot verify that it is compatible with the hardware, but if I go ahead anyway, it installs and works.

Running the version 15 setup.exe from the top level (not the one in the x86 folder) appears to work and complete with no error messages, but doesn't actually do anything. No files are actually copied, and the mouse in Device Manager is unchanged. However subsequently doing a driver update of the mouse in Device Manager, and pointing it at the INF file in the x86 folder does work, and produces a working installation, without any modification to the INF file. Perhaps I should try uninstalling and reinstalling again disabling some of the executables and dlls by renaming them, to try and determine which files are actually needed for the driver to work at a basic level, even if that means that there's no control panel and the settings can only be changed by directly editing the registry. Otherwise a lot of time could be wasted trying to make files work on XP which aren't actually needed anyway.

OK, now working fine again on 8.1 with version 15 of the driver! Can I just ask, before we start profiling exe files and dll files, surely there is absolutely no point in doing this if the problem is actually with ETD.sys? From all the experimentation we've done, the only time that the driver has actually worked, even on Windows 8.1, is with the version 15 version of ETD.sys. No others have worked on 8.1, and none at all have worked on XP of course, or we wouldn't still be here! If version 15 of ETD.sys is the only one capable of actually recognising the hardware correctly, no amount of tinkering with the other files is going to do any good surely? Also if that version of ETD.sys is incompatible with XP in some way, and cannot be made compatible, there's no point anyway because it still won't work, even if all the other files are loaded and running correctly.

Thanks for the words of encouragement @jumper, I was starting to need them again! I transferred the exe and dll files over, and needless to say it still didn't work. ETDCtrl.exe is now running happily in the background, but the Elan tab in the Mouse Properties is completely blank again, which is worse than before! With just the exe files transferred it still looked OK, even if the driver wasn't actually working. I'll put things back to normal so we have a working installation with version 15, and we'll take it from there again!

OK, thanks! There must be others already using this new version I would have thought? Where it seems to be failing, and it's failing on Firefox 59.2 ESR and IE8, which use completely different mechanisms of course, is at the point at which the "do you want to run this" window normally appears. It seems to be loading, in that there is a box where the output should be, but it never goes any further. The fact that is failing in exactly the same way on a plugin-based browser and on an ActiveX-based browser would seem to indicate that it's something further downstream of the actual plugin which is failing.

That's definitely starting to look like "more trouble than it's worth" territory! I will just try transplanting all the executables, and all the dlls across as well this time, just to see if the result is any different.

Well I tried transplanting the executables (not the dlls) and perhaps not surprisingly, it no longer works. ETDCtrl.exe isn't running, although it's set to run from the registry, and if I start it manually, it appears in Task Manager for a few seconds, and then closes again.

Well I'm happy with what I've got working on Windows 8.1, Windows XP is another matter though! If I transplant the hopefully XP compatible executables (and dlls?) over to the working installation on 8.1, and it still works, I would be hopeful that it might work if transplanted to XP as well. I think a lot depends on whether ETD.sys is XP compatible, as only the version 15 version seems to be able to talk to the hardware.