Where is the Ultranav Tab in my Control Panel? Want it back!

[Steve06]

Hi,
on my T61 with Windows 7 64-bit, I don't seem able to get the Ultranav tab to show up under "Mouse" in the Control Panel.
I tried reinstalling the newest Ultranav drivers for my OS as well as the Utility a couple of times, in vain. The problem persists.
I've tried a few tips I found on related articles in Google, but nothing helped.

If you know about this problem and how to solve it (under a system similar to mine), I'd be glad to hear about it.

Thanks,
Steve

[sarbin]

no ultranav tab on my mouse control panel either on my win7pro64 x301. haven't looked on my other win7 thinkpads. i thought it was because i routinely disable the touchpad in bios, but enabling it didn't change anything or pop a msg about new hardware found. checked tvsu and didn't see any offered ultranav drivers either. on the other hand, windows update is offering 'Alps - Input - ThinkPad UltraNav'. i'd bet i'd get the tab if installed, but i'm not going to, since i have no use for the touchpad.

so... check windows update for a driver. or check the driver matrix for your model to see if there's an appropriate driver.

hth.

[Steve06]

i already checked all of that, both the Windows Update driver and the newest drivers from Lenovo.

normally, i have no use for the touchpad either b/c i use a mouse or the trackpoint.

the thing is that under the ultranav configuration you can set the touchpad to scroll in all directions, like on Apple products, thus making navigation in PDF or other files much easier. I at least wanted to test it but now found out I cannot.

[sarbin]

does the device manager list the ultranav in any specific way? if so, does it show the correct installed driver ver#?

sorry i can't offer any other suggestions.

[Steve06]

i have one "Thinkpad UltraNav Pointing Device" under Mice and it shows a current date (03/24/2011) so I assume it is ok.

wait a minute, should there be TWO distinct "Thinkpad UltraNav Pointing Devices", one the Trackpoint, the other the Touchpad?

[sarbin]

i believe that 'ultranav' refers to both trackpoint and touchpad as a unit.

you may want to uninstall the driver and reinstall only one or other, windows update supplied version or lenovo.

[Steve06]

already did that and tried both ways.
i assume there must be some TRICK that someone might know who ran into the same persistent problem.

[Harryc]

I have Win7 64bit on my T410 and there is only one Ultranav tab on the mouse control panel election. I believe that is normal. The 'Ultranav' is one unit consisting of the touchpad and the trackpoint. It makes sense that there is one tab for it. Both devices have settings on that one tab.

[Steve06]

i have an idea:
maybe the reason for the issue not being solved is that when I uninstall the "old" ultranav driver to reinstall it, for some reason, Windows keeps reinstalling the "old" one. For example, after uninstalling it, I think Windows asks for a restart, and when it reboots, it automatically recognizes the Ultranav and reinstalls the driver it alreads knows of (and which must be somewhere saved in Windows directories).

I'm savvy enough to know if this makes sense, but is there a way to get entirely rid of old drivers?

Btw: I use this driver for reinstall: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-66898 and I use the x64 version for installing since my Windows is 64-bit.

[Shawn3090]

On my t510, I go to Ultranav settings via the mouse options. The last tab is for Ultranav. Also, the trackpoint and touchpad are one device to the computer. I know this because when I uninstalled the driver, it said "Synaptics pointing device (pointing stick and touchpad)"

[davidhbrown]

I'm savvy enough to know if this makes sense, but is there a way to get entirely rid of old drivers?

Something I have done in desperation -- I do not say this is a recommended practice! -- is to ask the Device Manager what files the driver uses and delete them. Right-click the device to get its properties, click the Driver tab; click the "Driver Details" button.

There can be a large number of files. On my W520 on Windows 7 x64, there is a large collection in C:\Program Files\Synaptics\SynTP\, three in C:\Windows\system32\DRIVERS (v8042prt.sys, mouclass.sys, SynTP.sys), four in C:\Windows\system32\Syn*.dll and a matching set of four in C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Syn*.dll.

There is also C:\DRIVERS\WIN\UNAV created by the driver updater/installer from Lenovo.

If I were having trouble with the UltraNav, I would probably...

0) Boot into "Safe Mode" (? not sure if this is necessary or helpful)
1) Set system policies to prevent automatic search/install of drivers
2) Uninstall the driver UltraNav driver from the Device Manager
3) Disable the UltraNav device(s)
4) Delete the C:\Program Files\Synaptics folder
5) Delete the Syn*.dll DLLs from the 32 and 64-bit folders
6) Delete SynTP.sys *only* from C\Windows\system32\DRIVERS
7) Shutdown (cold) / Reboot
8) Reenable the device if necessary
9) Ignore the device driver not found warnings
10) Run the current installer for the device

Note that I have *NOT* had to actually do anything like this myself for a while, but I have done so in the past without totally hosing my system. Your mileage will vary depending on how careful you are about what you delete, whether your computer is subject to any policies I don't know about, and what was bothering it in the first place. Please be careful, and maybe wait a few days to see if anyone replies to warn you that I'm an idiot in any of the above...

[Mike Blake]

Mr. Brown, my fellow Rhode Islander, has good advice in his post -- I've had to do similar things in the past.

[crashnburn]

Ah! This is the ultimate Ultranav Drive thread Gotta bookmark & subscribe

[ozzymud]

@davidhbrown: 9) Ignore the device driver not found warnings

In XP at least the .inf is probably copied to the %systemroot%\inf directory (usually C:\windows\inf), and a .pnf is also compiled, might need to delete the proper 2 files there as well, else windows will still know of the hardware, just won't be able to find the drivers for it and will still find it and ask for them instead of searching for the hardware inf. Using this as step 1 will probably void most other steps.

@Steve06: Ever resolve this? If so, let us know... would help your fellow google'rs

[Steve06]

@ozzymud:
i have made several attempts along the lines of davidhbrown's suggestion, in vain. The problem persists and I have given up trying further, unless somebody comes up with a new idea....
i know for sure that i could get rid of the problem by reinstalling windows, but this is my production machine and i can't afford the time at the moment to set it up again with all the programs and configurations i need for my work.

[Colonel O'Neill]

Try an SFC /SCANNOW from an elevated command prompt to see if the mouse control applet is corrupt.

[Steve06]

@colonel: just did that and it found no errors at all.

[Colonel O'Neill]

[Richard Beeson]

I just went through a royal battle with Ultranav drivers on my old A31p machines, using XP -- some machines on SP2, some on SP3. I have had three Ultranav external keyboards for several years, and one of them, the travel keyboard, was starting to get sticky keys. Wanted to replace it. I found that the model numbers have changed, and Lenovo has quit making them, but I found them on eBay and Amazon. Disaster. None of my machines, in any of their configurations, would recognize the keyboards, even though the drivers worked fine for the older keyboards. The keyboards, in my case, were the problem. They were not identifying themselves properly to the system, or some such thing. Kept getting "found new hardware" messages, but the actual Ultranav drivers never showed up. Tried all the older, middle, and current generations of drivers, but no go, not even on machines that had not had any drivers installed previously. If I removed the new keyboard and connected or reconnected the old one, the drivers showed up.

I Finally sent two keyboards back, and ordered a third used keyboard on eBay that I knew was the right vintage. Had a model number 02R0xxx (the xxx's are different numbers, depending on whether the keyboard is travel, without number keypad, or full). This keyboard worked fine. So I think the problem is something in the new models of keyboards. Lenovo has screwed up the driver recognition. Some of these newer boards (the ones from Amazon) even have the old IBM logo, and they have a different part number from the Lenovos, but they're still a newer model. Go figure. I could not get the computers to recognize these new keyboards. I'm talking about 5 different A31p computers, with 9 different OS discs; every single one had the problem. As I said, some were even clean installs, with no previous drivers loaded (OS discs I had never used but kept for testing). Someone should really rain on Lenovo about this. Without the proper drivers, the trackpoint is slow and sluggish, and the touchpad can't be disabled. No options are available for either. This is ridiculous.

P.S. I saw on the Amazon reviews that anyone who downloaded the latest Synaptics drivers through Windows automatic update was really in for trouble. If anyone has automatic update on, they should disable any Synaptics downloads.