Jo-Anne wrote:

Where would I find the INF file for the touchpad, Paul? For what it's worth,
there's an entry for the Dell Touchpad in Add/Remove Programs, but there's
nothing at all for the Contour Mouse either there or in Program Files. Yet,
when the mouse is plugged into the working port, the Touchpad Properties
shows it by name.

Jo-Anne

When this program extracted, it said it was for Precision M4300 and apparently
it's by Alps. The self extracting file puts the stuff in C:\dell\drivers\R153769 .
And this was not in the 64 file M4300 section on the Dell site. I had to do
an external search, discover the file name, then get it from Dell. For some
reason, it isn't in the "input" section of the M4300 downloads.

http://downloads.dell.com/input/R153769.EXE

When you install a custom driver, such as the Alps, the Apfiltr.inf is
copied into C:\WINDOWS\inf, but the file is also renamed. The new file
name assigned to the file content, is of the form "oem25.inf", where
OEM implies a custom driver has been installed, and the two digit value
is a sequential number. As each custom driver is installed, if there is
an INF, the number is bumped by one so there won't be a name collision.
So if I did a "content" search in C:\WINDOWS\inf, for "Apfiltr.inf",
I'm going to find that string, inside an OEM25.inf type file. Now, I
have OEM files stretching up to OEM25.inf, and on your machine, it might
stretch up to a different number. But if you search on Apfiltr.inf as
a text string, using the Windows search, and focus it on the C:\WINDOWS\inf,
you should get a match in an OEMxx.inf type file.

This is the INF of the ALPS driver. And I see some suspicious entries.
The intention would be to match on ACPI\PNP0F13 for example.

*******
; Apfiltr.inf
;
; Alps Pointing-device Driver for Windows 2K/XP/Vista Installation
; Copyright(C) 1999-2007 Alps Electric Co., Ltd.

[CompanyMfg] ; for 2000, XP
%Apoint.DeviceDesc% = MouFilter_Inst.nt,*PNP0F13,*PNP0F03,*PNP0F0E,*PNP0 F0b,*PNP0F12
%Apoint.DeviceDesc% = MouFilter_Inst.nt,*AUI0300 ; DELL Comaneci
%Apoint.DeviceDesc% = MouFilter_Inst.nt,*AUI0301 ; DELL Bondi /Benz
*******

Now, I also get interesting entries, in the C:\WINDOWS\inf\msmouse.inf file.
And that file, I expect, is to handle other mice (without custom drivers).
My Logitech mouse would be handled by a file like that. I've extracted these
particular entries, so I can "decode" what the Alps driver is looking for. And
a common theme, is things on "PS/2 ports", not USB.

PNP0F13 ; MS PS/2 mouse
PNP0F03 ; MS PS/2 mouse
PNP0F0E ; Std PS/2 mouse i8042prt
PNP0F0B ; MS PS/2 mouse
PNP0F12 ; Logi PS/2 mouse i8042prt

So the question would be, why is the Alps driver claiming to be the driver
for some PS/2 mice ? It could be, that the touchpad is connected to a PS/2
interface inside the laptop. But then, why would your Contour Mouse be
identified in that way. It should be a USB device ?

If I use the free version of Lavalys Everest (from years ago), the only
HID item in the PNP section, is this, my keyboard. My keyboard is a PS/2
device.

PnP Devices:
PNP0303 101/102-Key or MS Natural Keyboard

My mouse is a USB device (since I don't have a second PS/2 port for the mouse).
This is what Everest shows for it. The mouse does not appear to have a PNP
identifier, as USB has a perfectly good plug and play scheme of its own
(the VID/PID, which in this case is 046D for Logitech, and C01A for the
particular flavor of mouse M-BQ85 optical with scroll wheel).

USB Devices:
046D C01A USB Human Interface Device

So what I don't understand in your case, is how the Alps driver
has concluded the Contour mouse belongs to it. The INF seems to
imply it will glom onto *PNP0F13,*PNP0F03,*PNP0F0E,*PNP0F0b,*PNP0F12
which are PS/2 things ?

From what I'm seeing, I don't know if removing the Alps package is
going to help. I mean, if the INF matching scheme was working properly,
your Contour mouse should never have been involved in the first place.

As far as I know, a "USB port is a USB port". I've never heard of USB
ports being dual personality.

In Everest, you'd use the Report wizard, select "Hardware related"
items, and ask for a plain text output. In there, you'd look for

--------[ Physical Devices ]---------

then

PnP Devices:

and see if the Contour is in there. As far as I know, the Contour should
be appearing with respect to some USB entry.

When I look in the unofficial list of USB devices, I'm not seeing something
I identify as your mouse. But if you use Everest, you'll be able to get the
info for it, and see how the system identifies it.

http://www.linux-usb.org/usb.ids

Everest is here.

http://majorgeeks.com/download4181.html

I use the Report Wizard in there, as it's easier to do a text search
in the report listing, and find the hardware entries I'm looking for.
Using the GUI interface for this purpose, is a lot harder.

*******

Does the Alps control panel, allow "deleting" the Contour entry ?
Is that the purpose of that panel ? I don't have a lot of
experience with touchpads, or how they're controlled.

Paul