Disabling touchpad tapping with a script?

There is no facility with my laptop and Windows 10 at present to switch
of the touchpad's tapping and gestures features, which I've always
disliked. In the past I've turned them off with e.g. Synaptics' driver
software. This Archos Cesium 140 has not responded to drivers from
Synaptics, Alps or Elan - nothing appears on the taskbar.

I've reason to believe it's not a Synaptics touchpad anyway - I've used
an application called Touchpad Blocker which has a grey-out setting
which applies only to Synaptics devices, which presumably wouldn't be
greyed out if applicable.

If there is no other way to switch of the tapping and gestures, I
wondered if it's possible to write a script which will do what I need?
It's not always convenient to have the pad disabled and to use a mouse.

In Device Manager the touchpad is just a 'HID-compliant mouse', which
seems almost as bizarre to me as a floppy drive driver being in place
for the eMMc drive.

Thanks for any help.

Using Regedit, I've navigated to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mouse

The setting Mouse Sensitivity I've changed from 10 to 5, and now
currently 3. Maybe I'm imagining things or haven't tested long enough,
but I haven't made my usual 'mistakes' yet since this.

Or maybe this setting is absolutely something else? (There is nothing
there from Synaptics, Elan or Alps.)




Alan Sundry wrote:
There is no facility with my laptop and Windows 10 at present to switch
of the touchpad's tapping and gestures features, which I've always
disliked. In the past I've turned them off with e.g. Synaptics' driver
software. This Archos Cesium 140 has not responded to drivers from
Synaptics, Alps or Elan - nothing appears on the taskbar.

I've reason to believe it's not a Synaptics touchpad anyway - I've used
an application called Touchpad Blocker which has a grey-out setting
which applies only to Synaptics devices, which presumably wouldn't be
greyed out if applicable.

If there is no other way to switch of the tapping and gestures, I
wondered if it's possible to write a script which will do what I need?
It's not always convenient to have the pad disabled and to use a mouse.

In Device Manager the touchpad is just a 'HID-compliant mouse', which
seems almost as bizarre to me as a floppy drive driver being in place
for the eMMc drive.

Thanks for any help.

Alan Sundry wrote:

Archos Cesium 140

They do not provide an online user manual, just a very short and nearly
worthless overview manual.

You sure there is no Fn+Fkey keyboard combo to disable the touchpad? I
searched for a pic of its keyboard and found:

http://www.archos.com/img/products/t...m-large_01.png

When I zoom in on that pic, I can recognize some of the Fn+Fkey combos.
Fn+F6 and Fn+F7 is for brightness control. Fn+F1 might be to
enable/disable the wifi support. Fn+F3/F4/F5 are volume up/down/mute.
What does the Fn+F2 combo do? It has a picture of toggling a mouse
device. Maybe that is for the touchpad.

Yes, fn and F2 can toggle the touchpad, which will be useful sometimes.
Really want to tame the tapping and gestures though.

Thanks.


VanguardLH wrote:
Alan Sundry wrote:

Archos Cesium 140

They do not provide an online user manual, just a very short and nearly
worthless overview manual.

You sure there is no Fn+Fkey keyboard combo to disable the touchpad? I
searched for a pic of its keyboard and found:

http://www.archos.com/img/products/t...m-large_01.png

When I zoom in on that pic, I can recognize some of the Fn+Fkey combos.
Fn+F6 and Fn+F7 is for brightness control. Fn+F1 might be to
enable/disable the wifi support. Fn+F3/F4/F5 are volume up/down/mute.
What does the Fn+F2 combo do? It has a picture of toggling a mouse
device. Maybe that is for the touchpad.

Alan Sundry wrote:

VanguardLH wrote:

What does the Fn+F2 combo do? It has a picture of toggling a mouse
device. Maybe that is for the touchpad.

Yes, fn and F2 can toggle the touchpad, which will be useful sometimes.
Really want to tame the tapping and gestures though.

Those aren't defined in the Mouse app in Control Panel?

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-c...nce-windows-10

Although that article doesn't show anything related to gestures, I've
used mouse software that added a tab to the Mouse Properties dialog for
more options.

Is there a tray icon for the mouse? That's one of the options that a
3rd party driver might add (and seen as an additional tab in the Mouse
Properties dialog). Enable the option to show the mouse tray icon.
Then right-click on the mouse tray icon which may have the gestures
option for you to disable.

http://www.intowindows.com/how-to-tu...in-windows-10/

That says for some touchpads that you use the Setting app to get at the
touchpad settings and then disable the features you want.

I found a Microsoft rep in a forum stating:

From the description provided, I understand that you want to disable the
track pad gestures in Windows.

Please be informed that this feature to interact with Windows is an
inbuilt feature and depends on the brand and model of touchpad. So, it
is not possible to disable the gesture feature of the touchpad you are
referring to.

If the driver for the touchpad does not expose the gesture options in
the Settings wizard or as another tab in the Mouse Properties dialog,
they've given you no means to alter those features.

Are the tapping features (whatever those are beyond single and
double-clicking) and gesture features present only in a single program,
like the web browser, or are they present in every program, even in
Notepad? Some programs, like web browsers (with add-ons), add their own
gestures feature.

Alan Sundry wrote:
Yes, fn and F2 can toggle the touchpad, which will be useful sometimes.
Really want to tame the tapping and gestures though.

Thanks.


VanguardLH wrote:
Alan Sundry wrote:

Archos Cesium 140

They do not provide an online user manual, just a very short and nearly
worthless overview manual.

You sure there is no Fn+Fkey keyboard combo to disable the touchpad? I
searched for a pic of its keyboard and found:

http://www.archos.com/img/products/t...m-large_01.png


When I zoom in on that pic, I can recognize some of the Fn+Fkey combos.
Fn+F6 and Fn+F7 is for brightness control. Fn+F1 might be to
enable/disable the wifi support. Fn+F3/F4/F5 are volume up/down/mute.
What does the Fn+F2 combo do? It has a picture of toggling a mouse
device. Maybe that is for the touchpad.


If this was my machine, I'd use Device Manager (in the Start - right-click
menu), to have a look at the Properties of the device in question.

You can see a plug and play number in this picture.
From that, I would attempt to track down the
maker of the item, and from there, it might be possible to
find a full-featured driver for it.

https://s13.postimg.org/u9r5cs2zr/mouse_details.gif

Things like Trackpads, they start (when no driver is installed)
as a HID device. Like a mouse. Later, when you install a filter
driver on top of the HID, that filter driver extracts "gestures"
from the device character stream. An associated branded Control
Panel may give control of any virtual features added by the
filter driver.

Plug and play on that subsystem is far from perfect. A few products
were actually connected to a 16550 serial port (inside the SuperI/O),
and had almost no identifiers at all to work with. The company driver
provided would install over top of *any* HID device, leading to chaos.
There have been some pretty bad products in that regard.

If the device is USB, it might be in the first list. These are informally
maintained lists by volunteers, as the "real" lists are "hidden"
from public view. And as such, the lists can never be complete.
But these are the sort of thing we have to work with.

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

http://pciids.sourceforge.net/pci.ids VENEV

If your hardware scanning utility can't identify it, sometimes
those web pages have a hint as to what it is.

Paul

On Sat, 20 Jan 2018 10:16:26 +0000, Alan Sundry
wrote:

There is no facility with my laptop and Windows 10 at present to switch
of the touchpad's tapping and gestures features, which I've always
disliked. In the past I've turned them off with e.g. Synaptics' driver
software. This Archos Cesium 140 has not responded to drivers from
Synaptics, Alps or Elan - nothing appears on the taskbar.

I've reason to believe it's not a Synaptics touchpad anyway - I've used
an application called Touchpad Blocker which has a grey-out setting
which applies only to Synaptics devices, which presumably wouldn't be
greyed out if applicable.

If there is no other way to switch of the tapping and gestures, I
wondered if it's possible to write a script which will do what I need?
It's not always convenient to have the pad disabled and to use a mouse.

In Device Manager the touchpad is just a 'HID-compliant mouse', which
seems almost as bizarre to me as a floppy drive driver being in place
for the eMMc drive.

Thanks for any help.

Instead of trying to switch of the tapping you should try to
switch it off.
Look for a touchpad driver for your laptop.
You may be able to use one made for a different version of Windows,

On Sat, 20 Jan 2018 11:01:15 +0000, Alan Sundry
wrote:

Using Regedit, I've navigated to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mouse

The setting Mouse Sensitivity I've changed from 10 to 5, and now
currently 3. Maybe I'm imagining things or haven't tested long enough,
but I haven't made my usual 'mistakes' yet since this.

Or maybe this setting is absolutely something else? (There is nothing
there from Synaptics, Elan or Alps.)

You need this.

http://www.caliburn.nl/topposting.html




Alan Sundry wrote:
There is no facility with my laptop and Windows 10 at present to switch
of the touchpad's tapping and gestures features, which I've always
disliked. In the past I've turned them off with e.g. Synaptics' driver
software. This Archos Cesium 140 has not responded to drivers from
Synaptics, Alps or Elan - nothing appears on the taskbar.

I've reason to believe it's not a Synaptics touchpad anyway - I've used
an application called Touchpad Blocker which has a grey-out setting
which applies only to Synaptics devices, which presumably wouldn't be
greyed out if applicable.

If there is no other way to switch of the tapping and gestures, I
wondered if it's possible to write a script which will do what I need?
It's not always convenient to have the pad disabled and to use a mouse.

In Device Manager the touchpad is just a 'HID-compliant mouse', which
seems almost as bizarre to me as a floppy drive driver being in place
for the eMMc drive.

Thanks for any help.

On Sat, 20 Jan 2018 22:00:40 +0000, Alan Sundry
wrote:

Yes, fn and F2 can toggle the touchpad, which will be useful sometimes.
Really want to tame the tapping and gestures though.

Thanks.

You need this.

http://www.caliburn.nl/topposting.html



VanguardLH wrote:
Alan Sundry wrote:

Archos Cesium 140

They do not provide an online user manual, just a very short and nearly
worthless overview manual.

You sure there is no Fn+Fkey keyboard combo to disable the touchpad? I
searched for a pic of its keyboard and found:

http://www.archos.com/img/products/t...m-large_01.png

When I zoom in on that pic, I can recognize some of the Fn+Fkey combos.
Fn+F6 and Fn+F7 is for brightness control. Fn+F1 might be to
enable/disable the wifi support. Fn+F3/F4/F5 are volume up/down/mute.
What does the Fn+F2 combo do? It has a picture of toggling a mouse
device. Maybe that is for the touchpad.

Lucifer Morningstar wrote:
On Sat, 20 Jan 2018 10:16:26 +0000, Alan Sundry
wrote:

There is no facility with my laptop and Windows 10 at present to switch
of the touchpad's tapping and gestures features, which I've always
disliked. In the past I've turned them off with e.g. Synaptics' driver
software. This Archos Cesium 140 has not responded to drivers from
Synaptics, Alps or Elan - nothing appears on the taskbar.

I've reason to believe it's not a Synaptics touchpad anyway - I've used
an application called Touchpad Blocker which has a grey-out setting
which applies only to Synaptics devices, which presumably wouldn't be
greyed out if applicable.

If there is no other way to switch of the tapping and gestures, I
wondered if it's possible to write a script which will do what I need?
It's not always convenient to have the pad disabled and to use a mouse.

In Device Manager the touchpad is just a 'HID-compliant mouse', which
seems almost as bizarre to me as a floppy drive driver being in place
for the eMMc drive.

Thanks for any help.

Instead of trying to switch of the tapping you should try to
switch it off.
Look for a touchpad driver for your laptop.
You may be able to use one made for a different version of Windows,


Those Hardware IDs only ever point to masic mouse stuff, as if there
were no touchpad on this laptop. The manufacturor of the laptop, Archos,
seemingly don't reply to emails or do aftersales, so I still don't know
the brand. I think I'll open the machine up and look for markings, even
ones that might be useful if I get hold of a magnifying glass.

I've been looking at the registry, and the regitry of my dad's laptop,
which has a Synaptics touchpad, and wondering if parameters can be
transplanted at all into the mouse section of mine, or at least
something like this. But I suppose the values and so on are imported
into Windows by the driver and are not ones native to Windows that the
driver fine-tunes? But then that does make me wonder how the touchpad
works at all. Somehow all those gestures and so on are making sense to
the machine, to Wndows and specific applications.

Alan Sundry wrote:
Lucifer Morningstar wrote:
On Sat, 20 Jan 2018 10:16:26 +0000, Alan Sundry
wrote:

There is no facility with my laptop and Windows 10 at present to switch
of the touchpad's tapping and gestures features, which I've always
disliked. In the past I've turned them off with e.g. Synaptics' driver
software. This Archos Cesium 140 has not responded to drivers from
Synaptics, Alps or Elan - nothing appears on the taskbar.

I've reason to believe it's not a Synaptics touchpad anyway - I've used
an application called Touchpad Blocker which has a grey-out setting
which applies only to Synaptics devices, which presumably wouldn't be
greyed out if applicable.

If there is no other way to switch of the tapping and gestures, I
wondered if it's possible to write a script which will do what I need?
It's not always convenient to have the pad disabled and to use a mouse.

In Device Manager the touchpad is just a 'HID-compliant mouse', which
seems almost as bizarre to me as a floppy drive driver being in place
for the eMMc drive.

Thanks for any help.

Instead of trying to switch of the tapping you should try to
switch it off.
Look for a touchpad driver for your laptop.
You may be able to use one made for a different version of Windows,


Those Hardware IDs only ever point to masic mouse stuff, as if there
were no touchpad on this laptop.

There are different PNP schemes for the various busses.

There is VID:PID and VENEV, which have plenty of bits
to be used to look up the actual device information.

Some devices, the hardware company decides it's a good
idea to support "cloaking", so they allow laptop company
to connect their own 2K chip to the device with custom
declaration info. This makes it more difficult to track
the chip to the real manufacturer. I could also go to
the manufacturer and have them remove markings from the
chip entirely (chips with no laser-mark).

About all you can do, without opening the machine, is
scan all the busses, and get the numbers and run them
and see what pops up. In a Google search, enter the
make and model number of the computer, plus the PNP
numbers, and see if anyone has had to track down a
driver before for it or not.

And right now, you don't even need to do that,
as in Device Manager, this "basic mouse" you're finding
in there, the Properties and hardware ID in Device Manager,
should give you some numbers to work with.

Some busses are really hard to work with. I can't remember
how whether it's HDAudio or AC'97, but one of those
only provides a 12 bit code, suitable for up to 4096
unique devices. Which is one of the most severely cramped
busses around.

Some Synaptics-style devices, are actually connected via
RS232 or TTL-level serial busses, and for those, you're
relying on status calls of some sort, or some form of
in-band signaling to identify what they are. Such schemes
may not be standardized. Or well documented.

If you can "see" in Device Manager that the thing sits on
the USB bus, the situation should be a lot better
than one of the "serial connected" ones. Even a PS/2
flavor one should work to some extent, without having
to write code to probe them. For an RS-232 one, you
might even end up using HyperTerm to "talk" to the device.
That's assuming you can get any sort of hint on the web
as to how to do that.

There are times when looking inside a computer
pays off. But some laptops, you have to use a spudger
to remove the bezel and get inside, and many people
damage their device cosmetically while doing that
(because they don't really understand the "trick"
to get in). The electrical connectors inside laptops
are fragile, and lack basic protections present
on the same sorts of cables used on larger devices
(strain relief bar). You can't be a ham-fisted individual
when working inside such things. If you've "crushed lightbulbs"
while changing them, I would advise against working
inside a laptop. Some require disconnecting cables, just
to gain visual access.

Paul

Paul wrote:
Alan Sundry wrote:
Lucifer Morningstar wrote:
On Sat, 20 Jan 2018 10:16:26 +0000, Alan Sundry
wrote:

There is no facility with my laptop and Windows 10 at present to switch
of the touchpad's tapping and gestures features, which I've always
disliked. In the past I've turned them off with e.g. Synaptics' driver
software. This Archos Cesium 140 has not responded to drivers from
Synaptics, Alps or Elan - nothing appears on the taskbar.

I've reason to believe it's not a Synaptics touchpad anyway - I've used
an application called Touchpad Blocker which has a grey-out setting
which applies only to Synaptics devices, which presumably wouldn't be
greyed out if applicable.

If there is no other way to switch of the tapping and gestures, I
wondered if it's possible to write a script which will do what I need?
It's not always convenient to have the pad disabled and to use a mouse.

In Device Manager the touchpad is just a 'HID-compliant mouse', which
seems almost as bizarre to me as a floppy drive driver being in place
for the eMMc drive.

Thanks for any help.

Instead of trying to switch of the tapping you should try to
switch it off.
Look for a touchpad driver for your laptop.
You may be able to use one made for a different version of Windows,


Those Hardware IDs only ever point to masic mouse stuff, as if there
were no touchpad on this laptop.

There are different PNP schemes for the various busses.

There is VID:PID and VENEV, which have plenty of bits
to be used to look up the actual device information.

Some devices, the hardware company decides it's a good
idea to support "cloaking", so they allow laptop company
to connect their own 2K chip to the device with custom
declaration info. This makes it more difficult to track
the chip to the real manufacturer. I could also go to
the manufacturer and have them remove markings from the
chip entirely (chips with no laser-mark).

About all you can do, without opening the machine, is
scan all the busses, and get the numbers and run them
and see what pops up. In a Google search, enter the
make and model number of the computer, plus the PNP
numbers, and see if anyone has had to track down a
driver before for it or not.

And right now, you don't even need to do that,
as in Device Manager, this "basic mouse" you're finding
in there, the Properties and hardware ID in Device Manager,
should give you some numbers to work with.

Some busses are really hard to work with. I can't remember
how whether it's HDAudio or AC'97, but one of those
only provides a 12 bit code, suitable for up to 4096
unique devices. Which is one of the most severely cramped
busses around.

Some Synaptics-style devices, are actually connected via
RS232 or TTL-level serial busses, and for those, you're
relying on status calls of some sort, or some form of
in-band signaling to identify what they are. Such schemes
may not be standardized. Or well documented.

If you can "see" in Device Manager that the thing sits on
the USB bus, the situation should be a lot better
than one of the "serial connected" ones. Even a PS/2
flavor one should work to some extent, without having
to write code to probe them. For an RS-232 one, you
might even end up using HyperTerm to "talk" to the device.
That's assuming you can get any sort of hint on the web
as to how to do that.

There are times when looking inside a computer
pays off. But some laptops, you have to use a spudger
to remove the bezel and get inside, and many people
damage their device cosmetically while doing that
(because they don't really understand the "trick"
to get in). The electrical connectors inside laptops
are fragile, and lack basic protections present
on the same sorts of cables used on larger devices
(strain relief bar). You can't be a ham-fisted individual
when working inside such things. If you've "crushed lightbulbs"
while changing them, I would advise against working
inside a laptop. Some require disconnecting cables, just
to gain visual access.

** Paul
Thanks. This might be promising.

I had been looking up all those Hardware IDs numbers to no avail. They
don't lead to any brand-specific stuff to give me a driver.

Yes, the connection is USB if that helps. Does that give me anywhere
else to look?

I see in RegEdit if I do a few searches of 'touchpad' that I'm lead to
settings for PrecisionTouchPad, which do involve tapping values. I
changed these all from 1 to 0 anywhere I found them, to no avail.

Annoyingly I briefly had Debian Linux running on this laptop from a
pendrive and the touchpad worked. That might have meant that the brand
was named in one of the Linux logs. I can't currently access the
BIOS/EUFI because I changed a setting naively that seems to have stopped
USB working until Windows is loaded. Sounds a bit harebrained, but I've
seldom had a bad consequence like this, and I'm pretty sure it'll soon
be undone...

So I'll be opening the laptop in my usual careful fashion to see if/ how
can reset CMOS, which will let me look at the touchpad. This laptop
opens up very safely and easily, six screws and a gentle prising off of
the back. If things look beyond me I will give up, but in the meantime,
before I look, inside directions regarding getting any further hardware
IDs as suggested would be appreciated. (Is there even a fourth touchpad
manufacturer? Synaptics, Alps, Elan... ?)

Alan Sundry wrote:

Thanks. This might be promising.

I had been looking up all those Hardware IDs numbers to no avail. They
don't lead to any brand-specific stuff to give me a driver.

Yes, the connection is USB if that helps. Does that give me anywhere
else to look?

I see in RegEdit if I do a few searches of 'touchpad' that I'm lead to
settings for PrecisionTouchPad, which do involve tapping values. I
changed these all from 1 to 0 anywhere I found them, to no avail.

Annoyingly I briefly had Debian Linux running on this laptop from a
pendrive and the touchpad worked. That might have meant that the brand
was named in one of the Linux logs. I can't currently access the
BIOS/EUFI because I changed a setting naively that seems to have stopped
USB working until Windows is loaded. Sounds a bit harebrained, but I've
seldom had a bad consequence like this, and I'm pretty sure it'll soon
be undone...

So I'll be opening the laptop in my usual careful fashion to see if/ how
can reset CMOS, which will let me look at the touchpad. This laptop
opens up very safely and easily, six screws and a gentle prising off of
the back. If things look beyond me I will give up, but in the meantime,
before I look, inside directions regarding getting any further hardware
IDs as suggested would be appreciated. (Is there even a fourth touchpad
manufacturer? Synaptics, Alps, Elan... ?)

Here's my mouse as an example. It's a USB mouse. A HID (Human Interface Device).

https://s9.postimg.org/lsyist4lr/mymouse.gif

046d:c01a as the VID and PID, is what I get from Device Manager.

Then I look it up:

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

046d Logitech, Inc.
...
c01a M-BQ85 Optical Wheel Mouse

And that's what it is.

What did you get for your unknown device ?

Paul

Paul wrote:
Alan Sundry wrote:

Thanks. This might be promising.

I had been looking up all those Hardware IDs numbers to no avail. They
don't lead to any brand-specific stuff to give me a driver.

Yes, the connection is USB if that helps. Does that give me anywhere
else to look?

I see in RegEdit if I do a few searches of 'touchpad' that I'm lead to
settings for PrecisionTouchPad, which do involve tapping values. I
changed these all from 1 to 0 anywhere I found them, to no avail.

Annoyingly I briefly had Debian Linux running on this laptop from a
pendrive and the touchpad worked. That might have meant that the brand
was named in one of the Linux logs. I can't currently access the
BIOS/EUFI because I changed a setting naively that seems to have
stopped USB working until Windows is loaded. Sounds a bit harebrained,
but I've seldom had a bad consequence like this, and I'm pretty sure
it'll soon be undone...

So I'll be opening the laptop in my usual careful fashion to see if/
how *can reset CMOS, which will let me look at the touchpad. This
laptop opens up very safely and easily, six screws and a gentle
prising off of the back. If things look beyond me I will give up, but
in the meantime, before I look, inside directions regarding getting
any further hardware IDs as suggested would be appreciated. (Is there
even a fourth touchpad manufacturer? Synaptics, Alps, Elan... ?)

Here's my mouse as an example. It's a USB mouse. A HID (Human Interface
Device).

https://s9.postimg.org/lsyist4lr/mymouse.gif

046d:c01a as the VID and PID, is what I get from Device Manager.

Then I look it up:

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

046d* Logitech, Inc.
***** ...
***** c01a* M-BQ85 Optical Wheel Mouse

And that's what it is.

What did you get for your unknown device ?

** Paul


The longest entry under the hardware IDS is:

USB\VID_1D0B&PID_0021&MI_00


So I gather it's 1D0B and 0021 respectively that I'm looking up on the
Linux USB site?

Pardon me if I'm not understanding. Just leaving a flu behind...

Alan Sundry wrote:
Paul wrote:
Alan Sundry wrote:

Thanks. This might be promising.

I had been looking up all those Hardware IDs numbers to no avail.
They don't lead to any brand-specific stuff to give me a driver.

Yes, the connection is USB if that helps. Does that give me anywhere
else to look?

I see in RegEdit if I do a few searches of 'touchpad' that I'm lead
to settings for PrecisionTouchPad, which do involve tapping values. I
changed these all from 1 to 0 anywhere I found them, to no avail.

Annoyingly I briefly had Debian Linux running on this laptop from a
pendrive and the touchpad worked. That might have meant that the
brand was named in one of the Linux logs. I can't currently access
the BIOS/EUFI because I changed a setting naively that seems to have
stopped USB working until Windows is loaded. Sounds a bit
harebrained, but I've seldom had a bad consequence like this, and I'm
pretty sure it'll soon be undone...

So I'll be opening the laptop in my usual careful fashion to see if/
how *can reset CMOS, which will let me look at the touchpad. This
laptop opens up very safely and easily, six screws and a gentle
prising off of the back. If things look beyond me I will give up, but
in the meantime, before I look, inside directions regarding getting
any further hardware IDs as suggested would be appreciated. (Is there
even a fourth touchpad manufacturer? Synaptics, Alps, Elan... ?)

Here's my mouse as an example. It's a USB mouse. A HID (Human
Interface Device).

https://s9.postimg.org/lsyist4lr/mymouse.gif

046d:c01a as the VID and PID, is what I get from Device Manager.

Then I look it up:

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

046d* Logitech, Inc.
****** ...
****** c01a* M-BQ85 Optical Wheel Mouse

And that's what it is.

What did you get for your unknown device ?

*** Paul


The longest entry under the hardware IDS is:

USB\VID_1D0B&PID_0021&MI_00


So I gather it's 1D0B and 0021 respectively that I'm looking up on the
Linux USB site?

Pardon me if I'm not understanding. Just leaving a flu behind...
Additionally would you have any idea why those PrecisionTouchPad
registry values don't apparently interact with anything installed?