Alienware 13 - touchpad driver?

Noticed the new Alienware 13 uses the Windows 8 modern settings app to access trackpad settings. Unfortunately, there are almost no settings in the app. I'm most interested in three finger clicking to serve as middle click.

I downloaded Windows 8.1 Alps touchpad drivers from Acer and discovered that they identify as certified for the touchpad, so my best guess is that it's Alps. That being said, none of the processes (like APoint.exe) will run.

Anyone have ideas on this?

 

I reply to you because I'm also looking for the touchpad driver settings and the manufacturer.

But first, I need to ask of you:

1. Is this you?
2. How did you manage to "know" that the Windows 8.1 Alps touchpad drivers from Acer can identify and certify the touchpad?
3. And where did you know of this? If you did ask this from Dell Support, then nevermind.
4. Have you seen this?

There can be many other drivers out there that can also identify the touchpad as theirs, since the drivers available for download on most laptop manufacturer's site are certainly certified for Microsoft Windows. I don't recall if there are official drivers for a laptop that aren't certified for Windows at all...

For all I know, the touchpad may probably be the most generic touchpad, and it just so happens to support multi-touch up to 2 fingers. The only thing I know of is that Dell Support is probably making a trackpad (touchpad) driver update soon in the future, or maybe not?

Since the reviews are fairly new about this laptop, I'm guessing there aren't many places where the entire Alienware 13 laptop specs are available in its entirely. Even Dell doesn't have a list of technical specifications (maybe it's because most of the configurations can be chosen by the end-user).

 

1. Nope! I did post a thread in Dell's Alienware forum under this same username - no responses yet.
2. The INF file that is packaged with a driver includes a list of hardware identifiers that the driver supports. Every piece of hardware with a Windows-certified driver has a unique hardware ID - unique in that a particular hardware model number will have a hardware ID that is different from other models. There are three major touchpad brands used by OEMs - Elan (popular with Samsung), Synaptics (popular with HP, Lenovo, and some Dell laptops) and Alps (popular with Acer, ASUS, and most Dell laptops).
   
   Synaptics makes a generic driver available that works with all Synaptics touchpads regardless of OEM. Those didn't detect an installed Synaptics touchpad. Dell has used Alps touchpads in their Latitude line for many years now (since the original D-series models), so my next guess was Alps.
   
   I used the drivers from this thread. I tried all three downloads - Dell, Fujitsu, and Acer. The Acer drivers had a hardware ID that matches the Alienware 13's trackpad, so they automatically installed when I pointed Device Manager to the drivers I downloaded. The driver is there - version 8.100.404.201 is installed on my machine. The Alps software (APoint.exe) is set to run at startup - it exits shortly after launching. More than likely it's some incompatibility between the driver version and the specific touchpad hardware. It's also possible that the touchpad is using firmware that overrides using the Alps software, since by default the touchpad uses Windows 8's built-in touchpad options in the modern Settings app.
3. I got no information from Dell. This was just my own trial and error messing with different drivers.
   
   It's very unlikely that this is a "generic touchpad" - no such thing really exists. Like most commodity computer hardware, there are only a small handful of manufacturers who actually make touchpads - even Apple doesn't make their own special touchpads; they're just Synaptics hardware with Apple firmware controlling the hardware. It's just a matter of finding the right driver for the hardware in this case, I think.
   
   Hopefully Dell has something in the works. I really just want to control gestures and whatnot.

 

Did you see my #4 bullet point? If not, I can relink here.

Should we wait on their official word on touchpad drivers? I'm not sure if installing an incorrect driver will void a portion of the warranty or something...

The Alienware 13's touchpad is a HID compliant mouse, and is a PS/2 compatible mouse. It did not say anything like "ALPS Pointing Device" or anything related to Alps, so I'm guessing those drivers aren't compiled for Windows 8.1 with an Alienware build.

I don't want to install drivers and test the waters, since I'm now used to the touchpad's capabilities. So, I guess I will have to wait and see.


Missed vBulletin by the way. Xenforos suck in my browser.

 

Sorry about that - missed that last link.

The touchpad is almost definitively not Synaptics. It's possible that the Dell rep who spoke to that other user thought it is, due to the fact that the previous generation of Alienware hardware - the now-obsolete 14 and the currently-available 17 and 18 - all use Synaptics trackpads. Synaptics' generic driver (available directly through them) does not recognize the hardware ID of the Alienware 13's touchpad. Force-installing the drivers also doesn't accomplish anything. The fact that an Alps driver package has the Alienware 13's touchpad in its recognized hardware ID list is a strong indicator that this particular laptop has an Alps touchpad.

For a piece of hardware to have Microsoft-certified drivers, Microsoft checks the hardware ID against the list of known IDs. No two models of hardware have the same hardware ID. With that being the case, it's very unlikely that a piece of hardware with a unique Alps hardware ID is anything but Alps hardware.

The Windows Device Manager isn't going to identify any pointing device by brand unless branded drivers are installed - if you install a new video card without drivers, Device Manager won't see it as something like "NVIDIA GeForce 860", it's just going to show "Standard VGA Adapter".

Installing drivers on your computer won't void the warranty. Drivers are just another kind of software. Modern computer hardware is intelligent enough that it's not going to self-destruct if the wrong drivers are installed - if anything, the hardware just won't work until the proper drivers are installed.

 

Okay.

Like always, if there's any updates on the situation, please let the community know.

 

There is a Dec 17 revised Synaptics Touchpad Driver for the AW 13. The first line in the description calls for Windows 7. Further down the page, Windows 8.1 is listed as operating system for this driver. My AW 13 is still on order so I don't know if this works with 8.1.

Synaptics Touchpad Driver Driver Details | Dell US

Robert

 

Downloading the file right now, but the speed is slow, as my neighborhood is currently undergoing a free upgrade from 30Mbps to 50Mbps. Will update once I finished installing and rebooting my AW13.


UPDATE:

I couldn't find any Synaptics icon or anything that resembles a white A red icon in Windows 8.1 entirely. I supposed this driver is really only intended for Windows 7 64-bit, and that Windows 8.1 64-bit isn't added in?

My guess is that the bottom "Supported Operating Systems" means the driver can be installed on those systems, and will be fully compatible with Synaptics trackpad only if you are running Windows 7.

 

I don't know why Dell is making this driver available for the Alienware 13. It's flat-out not the right driver. If you look in the Device Manager, the driver being used is still the generic PS/2 mouse driver. If the Synaptics driver were being used, it would have something other than a generic hardware name, and the Dell touchpad software would load when Windows boots.

I'm still convinced that these laptops have some version of an Alps trackpad in them, given that one of Alps' drivers properly identified the hardware ID of the trackpad. Maybe some models have Synaptics and some have Alps?

 

What other models would there be? I have no citations to back up the claim that there are multiple models of Alienware 13.

Anyway, someone should send an email back to Dell telling them that the Synaptics trackpad driver is not compatible with Alienware 13 or something. I probably won't since I will be sending my laptop back to repair the LCD screen issue I'm having, and probably will get it back on the second week of January.

 

It's not terribly uncommon for an OEM to use multiple vendors for parts. It's possible that Dell used both Synaptics and Alps parts in the Alienware 13.

My Alienware 13 definitely doesn't have a Synaptics touchpad.

 

I thought you are referring to multiple models of Alienware 13, and not the different vendors.

 

Are people using this driver for a particular reason? I ask because I am having some problems with my touchpad, specifically the scroll gestures aren't working very well. The pointer works fine though.

Can anyone confirm that the above driver is ok to use with the A13?

 

I updated the drivers and doesn't seem to fix anything. The scrolling is not fixed. So I revert to a trackball mouse

 

It would be best if those who downloaded and tried out the drivers would send an email to Dell telling them this isn't the right driver. I had already sent mine to them before, but no feedbacks though.

 

Guys, I registered in this forum JUST TO HELP YOU GUYS, because I suffered 2 hours of hair-pulling figuring this out, and I hate to see you guys suffering daily using a suboptimized trackpad. the AW13 came with synpase driver installed and working so there has to be a solution! YES I HAVE THE FIX TO RESOLVE THIS, follow the below directions, REMOVE THE SYNAPSE DRIVER FIRST

First day receiving the unit I put a SSD in, installed Windows 8.1 and had hard time to get the trackpad to work right, finally thanks to these steps below I figured it out

1) install Intel Serial IO I2C Host Controller driver http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/Drivers/DriversDetails?driverId=N1FCG

or use Lenovo's Intel Serioal IO2 driver (what I installed)

https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/downloads/ds101497

2) now the AW13 unit actually will recognize the trackpad as a touchpad, NOT as a Ps2/compliant mouse or whatever

3) then install Synpase driver from Dell (remove it first if you installed it) and now you can gesture the way you want

FURTHERMORE, now you will notice that the gesturing with synapse works well in IE, files folders, including 3 finger back/forward slide gestures, BUT it will not work right in CHROME!!! Man what a pain-in-da-arse this is, luckily thanks to Mr. Hinkles just download the registry fix and double click on the registry file, click accept and ok for the warning, log out first, then log back in so the synpase drivers can reset for chrome, now Chrome will recognize the synapse touchpad gesturing,

http://nathanhinkle.com/software/programs/chrome-synaptics-multitouch/

YOU GOT YOURSELF A MACBOOK PRO LEVEL TRACKPAD NOW!

Regards,

Alpha

 

For anyone who cares about the reasoning why many drivers will not work when installed;

The Intel motherboard in AW 13 and I believe most of the laptop motherboards has to have the serial IO I2C driver to recognize the trackpad, the rest of it is simply the driver of your choice, so it's not that we are using the wrong synpatic/ALPS driver for the AW13, it's the motherboard has to recognize the trackpad first. At least I believe this is the reasoning because BEFORE I installed the IO I2C driver in device manager it did not recognize the trackpad as a trackpad, it was rendering it as a regular PS2 mouse, thus the gestures did not work. Now why didn't Alienware/Dell just included this driver in their chipset drivers? You got me, I cannot tell you.

However I again emphasize that it's not the version of driver or brand (Synaptic vs. Alps), as long as it's for the right operating system (windows 8.1 64-bit in AW13's case), but rather there is a pre-requisite driver called IO Ic2. More evidence of this is that my old Toshiba can use BOTH synaptic or ALPS drivers and I did not have to manually install IO IC2 driver, I believe Toshiba's chipset drivers included it.

Regards,

Alpha

 

Thanks for sharing what worked out for you. I'll submit the feedback ot the team in charge of the site for them to add that driver in the list as one of the critical ones.

 

To Alpha3than:

You can replace the first link for the Intel serial IO I2C from Dell to this driver linked directly from Intel.

 

The saga continues.

I had the motherboard in my AW13 replaced, and around the same time I swapped out the OEM hard drive for a 480GB SSD and did a clean install of Windows 10 Enterprise.

Sure enough, neither the Dell nor the Synaptics I2C drivers worked. I had to force-install them for the three different components (two HID devices and one HID Touchpad), and I went ahead and installed the above-linked Intel I2C driver for good measure - although the driver name and version appeared to be identical to what I'd installed when I installed Windows on my new SSD.

It looks like with the force installation of the Synaptics drivers, things are working - I used the non-OEM driver directly from Synaptics since it's newer and doesn't use that ridiculous Dell control panel. When I tried to use Dell's drivers, the link to the Dell control panel appeared in the Windows Mouse control panel, and it launches DellTouchpad.exe...but the application doesn't actually work.

Now I've got a working trackpad control panel but I still have two big issues:

I have no three- or four-finger options for tapping and clicking.
Palm check doesn't work very well. I have to turn it all the way up to get it to do what it's supposed to do, and even then it sucks, and my cursor starts jumping all over the place if I stop typing for a second.

I have another laptop with an SMB Synaptics ClickPad (Lenovo ThinkPad W550s) that I use for work, and I've been using the laptop's own keyboard and mouse a TON and don't have the palm check issue - and three-finger taps and clicks are configurable. This trackpad has three finger gestures, so why can't I access tapping and clicking as well?

 

shifuimam,

I just reinstalled my AW13 to windows 10 pro and again was able to get my trackpad FULLY functional, here's what I did

#1 Chipset drivers (Dell)---> INSTALL ALL 3
http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/product-support/product/alienware-13/drivers

#2 INSTALL LENOVO Intel Serial IO I2C driver (yes, lenovo, what I used to get trackpad to register as trackpad in windows 8.1 pro, not as a mouse)
http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/downloads/ds103434

#3 install all other drivers applicable including sound drivers from dell page in #1, HOWEVER the video, bluetooth, and WIFI drivers does not work, get them from Killer
http://www.killernetworking.com/support/driver-downloads

#4 THEN install Dell's synaptics driver from link in #1, yes, I know it's weird with Lenovo Intel Serial IO driver working with Dell's synaptic, or synaptic's own site, but that's worked for me TWICE, both in windows 8 and 10

Dell if you are reading this you suck at your chipset drivers development and I wish AW never succumbed to your business dealings, you are putting people in this quandry...

Anyone else see other forums with helpless souls with AW13 trackpad please link this page, thanks

Alpha

 

another solution from here

https://na.alienwarearena.com/forum...ics-touchpad-not-working-after-win-10-upgrade

probably easier, lol

Alpha