Thinkpads Forum

I've been using this external keyboard model 31P8950 such that the one shows in this lenovo link:
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... 45868.html

i use it on XP 32-bit os and had no trouble whatsoever.
recently i move on to Vista 32-bit running my other thinkpad, i tried to use this lovely keyboard but had a persistent problem regarding its driver.
The driver for this keyboard which i downloaded from lenovo website fails to install as it generates this msg upon clicking the setup.exe:
'a newer version of synaptics pointing device is installed, please uninstall .....and so on'.

plugging in the keyboard without installing the driver, result in the keyboard work though, however it crashes the thinkpad's ultranav driver which causes vista to automatically download and replace itself with synaptic driver from synaptics rather than lenovo. The end result is, middle button of the thinkpad trackpoint no longer function nor it can be adjusted through pointing device properties in the control panel (the middle button of the trackpoint on the external keyboard suffers the exact same symptom too).
This is no big deal but is annoying as i rely a lot on these middle buttons for scrolling (imagine having no need to move your hand to drive the cursor but eventually need to use a mouse to do smooth scrolling haha)

I don't know if anyone can understand what i'm saying above but i tried hard to describe it as clear as possible and as is. no made-up story


PS: i checked in the website link above and found no indication that this particular keyboard has support for window vista. is this correct?

Why don't you try uninstalling the ThinkPad UltraNav driver. Next go into device manager and uninstall the synaptics touchpad driver in Device Manager. Now try installing the software for the keyboard. Reboot with the keyboard plugged in and see what happens.

Hi GomJabbar,

i followed your suggestion as follows:
1. uninstall thinkpad ultranav driver, reboot
2. didn't find synaptics driver installed, therefore i installed the keyboard driver, reboot with keyboard plugged in
Then both thinkpad and ext keyboard are now working perfectly as it should. wow i wouldn't have tried this method without your help, thanks

one thing i wonder about is, given that both devices are fully working now, do i still need to install the thinkpad ultranav driver which i uninstalled at step 1?

If it's working, I would leave well enough alone.

couldn't agree more with you, if it is not broken then don't try to fix it