How to get my trackpad "driver" to always run when starting Windows 7

Question

I have a HP netbook which came with Windows 7 Starter and a Synaptics track pad.

A few months ago while fighting a virus I removed everything that autostarted that I couldn't easily identify. I was successful in getting rid of the virus and at first didn't notice any side effects.

Later I realized that the two finger "gesture" of my trackpad no longer worked. After some trial and error I found that a program called SynTPEnh.exe which lives in the directory C:\Program Files\Synaptics\SynTP needs to be run to provide support for this gesture.

Now I'm not sure the best/proper way to get this "driver" (I guess technically it's actually a program rather than an actual driver) to run at system startup.

I'd prefer the way the factory would've set it up. I want to avoid anything silly like having it only run for me and not all users.

I thought the way to get things to run automatically was to create a shortcut in C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup but when I try the system gives me this error:

Windows can't create a shortcut here.

Do you want the shortcut to be placed on the desktop instead?

Obviously I don't want it on the desktop. I know I could copy it instead of creating a shortcut but that seems like a hack since it results in two copies which may result in potential future updates going awry. I know also that there's more than one way to auto-start something, for instance the registry. But I don't want to mess with the registry unless I'm told this is really the correct way to do it in this case.

So what's the correct/factory way to launch SynTPEnh.exe for all users on Windows 7 Starter?

Solution

So what's the correct/factory way to launch SynTPEnh.exe for all users on Windows 7 Starter?

Rather than going about hacks/tricks to launch the exe as part of startup, you should uninstall & reinstall the TrackPad drivers. The reinstall should fix whatever dependencies that the exe has, that you might not be accounting into, which might be causing the startup to fail.

Comments

[100rabh]

um, uninstall and reinstall the touch pad drivers?

[100rabh]

Post it as an answer then?

[hippietrail]

I think you should!

[100rabh]

well, just added an answer @hippie

[hippietrail]

Indeed this did turn out to be the simple answer after all. Usually I don't like (un)installing stuff that came with the machine and thought fixing the one broken thing would be simpler.