X240/s: How-to replace the Clunkpad with an X250 Touchpad+buttons

[RealBlackStuff]

How to install the X250 Synaptics touchpad+buttons driver in an X240/X240s:

1. Download this (Lenovo X250) Synaptics driver:
ONLY for W7, W8, W8.1 https://download.lenovo.com/pccbbs/mobiles/n10gw27w.exe do not install yet!
(If interested: https://download.lenovo.com/pccbbs/mobiles/n10gw27w.txt )

ONLY for W10 https://download.lenovo.com/pccbbs/mobiles/n1cgr22w.exe do not install yet!
(If interested: https://download.lenovo.com/pccbbs/mobiles/n1cgr22w.txt )

2. Go to Control Panel\Programs and UNinstall your current Synaptics/Alps drivers

3. Reboot

4. Doubleclick the X250 driver you just downloaded, run it, but UNtick the option to install now.
--- It will unpack to C:\DRIVERS\Win\UNAV

5. Go to C:\DRIVERS\Win\UNAV\WinWDF\X64\SynPD.inf for 64-bit (or X86\SynPD.inf for 32-bit)

6. Edit SynPD.inf and
--- find and delete all lines with LEN0035 in it (3 lines only!)
--- find all lines with LEN0046 and change LEN0046 into LEN0035 (3 lines only!)
--- save the file

LEN0035 is the X240/s hardware ID for both clunkpad and touchpad+buttons.
LEN0046 is the X250 hardware ID for the touchpad+buttons.

7. Go to C:\DRIVERS\Win\UNAV and doubleclick on Setup.exe
--- when Windows complains about unsigned stuff, click on "install anyway".

8. Reboot and enjoy!

9. ONLY if you run W10: go protect these W10 drivers against Micro$haft updates overwriting your hard work!


===============================================================
I have noticed that several people are having problems with the new touchpad and the trackpoint not working after replacing the X240 clunkpad.
Apparently the two flat cables (wider=keyboard, narrower= trackpoint) near the touchpad cable can relatively easy be dislocated, or even disconnected.
Check that they are fully and properly inserted!
(Does not apply to Tx40/Wx40)
===============================================================

See similar instructions to replace the Clunkpad on the T440/p

[Edward Mendelson]

And a quick note to confirm that RBS's magic trick worked perfectly to bring back the trackpad in my X240s that RBS (himself!) had modified by replacing the clunkpad with an X250 touchpad. The replaced touchpad stopped working after a Windows 10 update, and RBS's method revived it.

I still plan to document the amazing work that RBS did on this machine. It's quite a saga, with RBS solving a dozen problems along the way.

[sebileis]

Will these drivers allow the scrolling in Metro apps to work? I installed the X250 trackpad in my X240 and the TrackPoint scrolling works in "classic" apps such as Chrome and Windows Explorer, but the Start menu and any of the modern UI apps only work with the touchpad scrolling, which I am trying to avoid using.

[RealBlackStuff]

The above has been tested in W7 and W8.1 (by me) and in W10 (by Forum member Edward Mendelson)
I don't have, and never will have, anything to do with W10.
W10 has this br-ainless/-ight idea of changing drivers whenever Micro$haft feels like it.

Now ONLY if you run W10: go protect these W10 drivers against Micro$haft updates overwriting your hard work!

[r2digital]

So to start this thread was pretty helpful but it did not work for me. I purchased a X250 3 button touchpad to put into my x240. As soon as i did this i lost function of my touchpad completely. I decided to buy a new X240 trackpad because mine was worn out, when it arrived, i was shocked to find out that even a replacement x240 touchpad didnt work but the original that came with the laptop did. After a few hours of messing around i noticed that as soon as i uninstalled the synaptics driver(any version) the touchpad would function briefly so i knew it wasn't defective. Then, in order to get the drivers to install properly I had to boot into disable signed driver enforcement mode, install the correct drivers located in this post. Once the drivers were installed i decided to do a little more investigating as to why my touchpad was still disabled. Upon investigating i found that for some reason, when you go into device manager and look under system devices and scoll to synaptics SM BUS, then right click and disable it and the touchpad begins to function again and also shows up in the synaptics software immediatly. Disabling this device does not have any ill effects on gestures or touchpad functions as far as i know of. Everything appears to be working great over here. Anyway, after doing theses steps along with disabling ms from driver auto update feature my x250 pad now works in my x240. I hope this helps save some people from giving up completely on the trackpad swap

[RealBlackStuff]

I have noticed that several people are having problems with the new touchpad and the trackpoint not working after replacing the X240 clunkpad.
Apparently the two flat cables (wider=keyboard, narrower= trackpoint) near the touchpad cable can relatively easy be dislocated, or even disconnected.
Check that they are fully and properly inserted!
(Does not apply to Tx40/Wx40)

[cbrace]

Hi all,

I ordered the following X250 palm rest (with touchpad): https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/32625540 ... 4c4dZW7vUc

Last night I installed it on my X240. When I rebooted Linux, the touch pad is working, but not the three buttons alas.

Any thoughts on how to trouble-shoot this? The above-mentioned Windows driver instructions are obviously not applicable.

Also, as you can see in the images on the Aliexpress page above, the trackpad cable has these two long narrow "tails". What are these for? Do they need to be plugged in somewhere? The X240 palm rest doesn't have these. Not knowing what to do, I temporarily taped them to the top of the internal battery.

[RealBlackStuff]

The long "tails" go to the fingerprint reader, after you put the keyboard (back) in.
If you don't want/need the FPR, you can cut the tails off.
No idea about Linux drivers.

[TPFanatic]

I want to confirm the touchpad swap works for the S1 Yoga. I installed an X250 touchpad.
I was unsuccessful to install the modified driver however with the original linked driver the buttons and middle click work fine.

[capricerun]

Hello,
Has anyone gotten this to work in the lastest version of windows 10? The old hack with the file editing doesn't work. I have heard of someone doing a hack with thinkvantage, but the instructions to that were not clear. Would it work if I install an older version of Windows 10 then upgrade? If anyone knows anything about this problem let me know.

[Edward Mendelson]

I got this method to work on the latest Win10 version (1909), though I'm not sure exactly how I did it. Basically, I kept installing and reinstalling (using a plugged-in mouse to navigate). When I finally got the ThinkPad UltraNav Pointing Device to install, on maybe the sixth or seventh try, I didn't restart immediately, but went to the Group Policy Editor and enabled Prevent installation of devices that match any of these device IDs, and entered these three lines:

*ACPI\VEN_LEN&DEV_0035
ACPI\LEN0035
*LEN0035

Then I restarted and the touchpad seems to work correctly (though I had to lower sensitivity to avoid probems)

Hard-won advice: copy those three device ID lines into the Comment box in the menu for this setting so that you can find them again easily if you disable this setting before enabling it again.

[atax112]

Hello, great guide.

I have followed the procedure, but have issues.

Cant install the modified drivers outside of test mode and without windows updating or removing it afterwards.

Even with the applied policy to deny the system changing the drivers, windows removes it after the test mode is disabled and thus the touchpad becomes an unknown device which wont update because of the policy = no touchpad at all.

This is driving me crazy, I had it working before on windows 10 before the re-install, I figured it wont be much of a trouble to install it now either.

I found a how to on signing the drivers myself with my own created certificate, was for win 7 with some minor updates for win 10 and at the end a tl;dr on win 10 the driver wont be trusted anymore when self-signed, there is a system wide signature needed as well...

I ran out of ideas at this point and starting to really regret getting an x240, installing an IPS screen, replacing the touchpad and getting a larger battery instead of an x230 with a usable, functioning touchpad.

Lenovo, what were you thinking when you came up with the pos touchpad the x240 has originally...

Thank you.

[RealBlackStuff]

Why can't you install under 'normal' mode? That doesn't make sense at all.
But that's Micro$haft for you.
Maybe you need to first fully shut down W10 (hold down the SHIFT key, then click the “Shut down” option in the Start Menu).

And as for clunkpads, maybe Lenovo should change its name to Le-no-go.

[atax112]

Why can't you install under 'normal' mode? That doesn't make sense at all.
But that's Micro$haft for you.
Maybe you need to first fully shut down W10 (hold down the SHIFT key, then click the “Shut down” option in the Start Menu).

And as for clunkpads, maybe Lenovo should change its name to Le-no-go.

Master$haft says that the driver was tampered with, since the edit of certain lines so it lost its signature/trust.

I have no idead how, but eventually after another couple hours I got it working, heres how:

I have enabled test mode, admin cmd: bcdedit /set testsigning on
Installed/updated the drivers through device manager.
Restarted, verified working, restarted.

Set the policy to deny driver updates for the specific ID, but uncheck for already installed devices.(this option removes the drivers after restart so its not working)

bcdedit /set testsigning off, restart

It stuck, it works, finally.

I consider this a small miracle and we have our firstborn on the way

[RealBlackStuff]

Master$haft says that the driver was tampered with, since the edit of certain lines so it lost its signature/trust.

The instructions above clearly state: when Windows complains about unsigned stuff, click on "install anyway".

That should have let you install it in 'full' mode...

[atax112]

Master$haft says that the driver was tampered with, since the edit of certain lines so it lost its signature/trust.

The instructions above clearly state: when Windows complains about unsigned stuff, click on "install anyway".

That should have let you install it in 'full' mode...

Yeah I know, but in normal mode it wont even ask, just tell me the installation failed because the driver was tampered with.
Once in test mode, it asks and installs when told to.

Might be changed in some update, no clue, but this is how it worked for me.

[Psyduck91]

I replaced the touchpad on my X240 a while ago and the trackpoint seemed to have stopped working as stated in another post. I've tried pulling out the blue ribbon cable near the trackpad and re-inserting it as suggested but the trackpoint option is still greyed out in the UltraNav options. It's enabled in the bios and was working prior to swapping out the touchpad. Does anyone know what else could be the problem? It's driving me crazy!

I have noticed that several people are having problems with the new touchpad and the trackpoint not working after replacing the X240 clunkpad.
Apparently the two flat cables (wider=keyboard, narrower= trackpoint) near the touchpad cable can relatively easy be dislocated, or even disconnected.
Check that they are fully and properly inserted!
(Does not apply to Tx40/Wx40)

I've seen a few reddit threads and a video where they had to downgrade the drivers to an older version in order for the trackpoint to work. Could that be the issue?

I used the drivers that were provided in this thread and the physical left and right click buttons are working. Just the trackpoint is greyed out in the Ultranav options.

[Psyduck91]

Is the trackpoint supposed to show up as a separate item in device manager? I still have not been able to get it to work since the swap, the trackpoint is still grayed out in the settings. Maybe the cable is damaged?

[Psyduck91]

Has anyone with the trackpoint issue managed to fix the issue?

[RealBlackStuff]

What OS are you using and did you mod the drivers as described above?

[Psyduck91]

What OS are you using and did you mod the drivers as described above?

I'm using windows 10. I modded the drivers, the new touchpad works but the trackpoint stopped working as you mentioned some others have experienced. In the lenovo synaptics driver, the option to choose the trackpoint is greyed out. I've re-inserted the cable as suggested but still nothing. It's enabled in the Bios so I'm not sure what happened here.

[backlituser]

I'm having issues with doing this on Windows 10, followed guide word-for-word and it just throws an error when I try to run setup.exe
Any alternative guides / tips. The trackpad works fine when I uninstall the driver but windows re-installs the X240 drivers automatically
Thanks!

[Edward Mendelson]

It would help if you told us exactly what the error says.

[Ampere79]

The trackpad works fine when I uninstall the driver but windows re-installs the X240 drivers automatically

This exactly. I've spent the past couple of hours trying to get the Synaptics driver installed and working, to no avail. Windows 10 recognizes it as a plug-and-play device just fine, with all three buttons working, but I keep loosing the buttons when the Synaptics driver gets installed. Even after the .inf edits.

Is there some advantage to the Synaptics driver? Or can I just use the Windows driver? I'd really like to get the TrackPad fully functional, if possible, but I don't want to throw more time at this.

EDIT: I take that back. The buttons work for clicking with the Windows driver, but I cannot hold and drag with it.

[RealBlackStuff]

Did you follow the instructions in point 9?

[Ampere79]

I followed all the steps. See here for screenshots.

One note is that I had to restart with the cmd line

Code: Select all

shutdown /r /o /f /t 0

and navigate to Startup menu, Option 7 to get Windows to recognize the changed SynPD.inf file (and generate that error). Otherwise, I would just get an error when running Setup.exe and nothing would install (see screenshots for error image).

Basically, the outcome is that I have the driver installed, but no use of the buttons. Which kind of defeats the whole purpose of swapping out for the TrackPad. The alternative is using the Windows driver, which allows me to use the buttons with basic functionality but I don't have the Synaptics driver installed nor the TrackPad menu under the Mouse settings. Any advice to correct this would be much appreciated!

If it makes any difference, I am running the newest version of Windows 10 (2004), having just done a clean install. I also got the hint on how to restart the machine to force the driver installer to run here at the Lenovo community forum - this post is discussing installing the TrackPad on the ThinkPad Yoga, but many of the steps in esrevinu's post appear similar to the method proposed here. Not sure if something like that, adjusted for the X240, would be a good alternative or not.

[Edward Mendelson]

I had a very hard time getting the Synaptics driver installed with the latest Windows 10 update, but finally got it to work - at least it's still running after two or three restarts.

It took about four tries, and I don't know what finally worked, but I think one thing MAY have been useful. I use EasyBCD (search and download) for easy modification of the BCD store; there's an option that lets you specify that a 64-bit Windows installation can use unsigned drivers. I set that option on my 64-bit system, and, after two or three tries, got the installation to remain there after a reboot. I also put my machine in airplane mode so Windows update couldn't operate, and waited until after I rebooted to run the Group Policy Editor routine. But again, I can't be sure if one or none of these was what solved the problem. All I can say is that after four or five tries, it finally worked.

[Ampere79]

Okay, update for me:

I did all the above, but used the driver gggr07ww.exe, which is the proper driver for the X240. Still edited the SynPD.inf file, installed as directed (I still had to use the cmd line I posted above to get the driver to actually install), and have edited the Group Policy.

Outcome: I now have use of all my buttons and access to the TrackPad and TouchPoint Settings menus! Not sure what gives this time around, but it worked like a charm. I suppose the only downside I can see is the Lenovo website said development support had ended for the driver I used, but it was last updated March 24th, 2020, so I'm not terrible worried at the moment.

[RealBlackStuff]

All the problems that have been brought up above come (no) thanks to Micro$haft's W10 bollocks-updates.
One more reason to despise and abstain from W10.

[backlituser]

Does anyone have a good guide/video on how to re-seat the cable? My trackpoint and trackbuttons have stopped working!