Windows 8 - three problems

[chumpington]

Hi guys

I wonder if anyone can help me out with any or all of the following issues I'm having with Windows 8.1:

1) For some unfathomable reason the controls to modify touchpad scroll speed and scroll inversion are greyed out under Control Panel > Mouse > ELAN. I know where ELAN lives in the registry but can't figure out which entries need editing to enable this functionality. Actually I guessed at quite a few, changing their values (#registryvandal) but no change.

I'm minded just to disable ELAN completely, but I don't know whether Windows will fall back to a simpler, default touchpad driver or whether it will be disabled altogether.

Lastly, I've reinstalled the ELAN drivers... no change.

2) I cannot, for love nor money, get my GMail contacts integrated. I've been through the steps on MS's help page on this, removed my GMail account, reconnected it, etc etc. In both People and Mail the GMail symbol appears, confirming the accounts are connected, but the contacts fail to come in. EDIT - actually - and this is even worse - just ONE of my GMail contacts comes in! How to even begin to guess why one comes in and not the others?

3) Staying with the People app, I appear to have a weird bug whereby any letter I click simply shows me all contacts, not just contacts under that letter. Someone said to restart the app but this made no difference. (Incidentally, none of the letters are highlighted to show which do and don't have contacts under them, which would be the expected convention. Not sure if this is related...)

Thanks in advance TPU!

 

[95Viper]

Problem 1:

I am assuming this is a laptop/nettop/convertible you are referring to.

It might help if you let the people know the brand and model.

Is it possible your touchpad is not turned on... maybe try turning off & on whilst in windows. Using the Fn+F# keys.

Could it be an ALPS touchpad instead of an ELAN?

Have you gone into the PC settings to be sure your touchpad is enabled?

Problem 2:

I don't know what to tell you on this one... it may be a permissions or sync problem.
Maybe the article below may help...

Problem 3:

I believe the app is built, as, to function like that... it does the same for me and I found no other info to the contrary (yet).

The steps below in the quote do work, although, I wonder why they would not just add that functionality to the home screen of the People app.

Here is a quote from a PC World article that contains some info: Windows 8 deep-dive: Get to know the People app

Although user-interface adjustments in People are severely limited, you do have a way to "zoom out" and parse through contacts by letters of the alphabet instead of scrolling through hundreds of contact names. If your machine has a touchscreen, use a pinching motion with two fingers on the home screen—this action will activate the "semantic zoom" feature for that bird's-eye, alphabetic view. If you're using a mouse and keyboard, you can activate semantic zoom with the scroll wheel on your mouse. If you need to search for a specific contact, use the Search function in the Charms bar.

 

[chumpington]

Thanks for the reply.

If the touchpad were not enabled, I wouldn't have discerened that the scroll speed and direction were not as required So yes, of course it works, and it's definitely an ELAN; an ELAN tab appears under control panel > mouse settings.

It's an Acer V5 552.

Weird re: the people app; designed in such a way that, when you click a letter, you get all contacts regardless, rather than just those under that letter? If so, what's the point of the letters? Seems bizarre.

Thanks again.

 

[eidairaman1]

Report this to acer. Or get windows 7

 

[FX-GMC]

People App:
Clicking a letter for me just jumps to that letter in the All People list.

Touchpad:
http://community.acer.com/t5/Ultra-Thin/Windows-8-1-issues-with-S3-391-trackpad/td-p/135525

There are a couple things in that thread you could try that some people have said worked for them:

So after playing with it for over 2 hours I eventually found out why the option is greyed out, and how to fix it.

You have to open the ELAN Smart-Pad settings menu. Thereare 3 tabs on top - One-Finger, Multi-Finger, and Additional.

At first, under the Multi-Finger tab - and under "Scrolling" options - I could only check or uncheck "Vertical" and/or "Horizontal" scrolling. The other 3 options in this category - which are extremely important - were greyed out, and could NOT be changed. These 3 options are the "Scroll Speed" setting, and the "Internal Scroll" and "Reverse" options. The Scroll Speed was set to position 3 for me and the other 2 were checked. And I could NOT uncheck REVERSE - which was the most important thing to do for me.

So I played with the other settings and I found this - the above mentioned 3 options will no longer be greyed out and you will be able to change them if you do this:

Go to the 3-rd tab - "Additional" - and choose the last option to the left - "Gesture Effect"; there change the setting from "ZoomPerfect" to "Microsoft modern touchpad experience"; and then go back to the 2nd tab (Multi-Finger) and choose "Scrolling" again, and voila - now you will be able to change all the settings here, including the "Reverse" setting!

My even easier fix which seemed to miraculously work, was to

- Go to Control Panel
- Go to Mouse
- Elan tab (for trackpad)
- press stop device
- use "touchscreen" on Acer S7 fortunatley, to press enable device
and so I think it just need restarting. Installing new drivers probably achieves the same thing but the above took seconds and no faffing!

 

[95Viper]

Humor me... I am just curious.

• Open the Device Manager.
• Locate your Touchpad entry. It will be under Mice and other pointing devices.
• Right click on the entry and select Properties.
• Under the Driver tab, note the driver provider, date and version.
• Under the Details tab, select Hardware ID's from the pulldown menu.

And, post the results for the Driver info and the Hardware id info.

 

[chumpington]

@FX-GMC - thank you! That fixed the problem. God alone knows why ELAN chose to grey these options out in the first place. Thanks again.

@95Viper:

Driver:
ELAN
22/04/2013
11.6.23.203

Details:
ACPI\VEN_ETD&DEV_0508
ACPI\ETD0508
*ETD0508