Using an Asus' touchpad without Smart Gesture

Question

After resetting my company's ASUS N551J laptop using its recovery partition, I'm stuck between two annoying options:

1. Use the native driver for the trackpad, which doesn't support any form of scrolling guesture (not with a two-finger drag, and not with a one-finger drag on the side).
2. Have ASUS Smart Gesture installed, which is awful in every way imaginable. To limit my complaints to functional issues: it recognises unwanted guestures that can't be disabled (i.e. horizontal scrolling), it has unwanted inertia and acceleration in its pointer and scolling behaviour, and scrolling is ridiculously laggy.

Preferring minimality over garbage, I chose for the first option. I wonder, however: is there a simpler way to just support scrolling without bells and whistles that induce noticable lag? I can't seem to find an option in Windows 10's multiple (sigh) configuration screens, but since it's so touch-oriented, Windows 10 surely must have some way to enable this kind of gestures...

Under option 1, the trackpad is probed through ACPI and shows up as a "Microsoft PS/2 Mouse" (claimed by the i8042prt.sys and mouclass.sys drivers).

Solution 1

I feel your pain, I have spent a couple of hours trying to get rid of this application since it gives me a lot of issues.

I may be wrong, but I think there is no way to do this without either ASUS Smart Gesture or alternatively ASUS Elantech Touchpad driver1 (do not waste your time with it. It looks like it is simply an old rebranded version of the same thing).

On Windows 10 there is indeed native support for touchpad gestures. However, those touchpads must implement what Microsoft calls "Precision Touchpad"2, and it looks like the touchpads that come with ASUS laptops don't do this.

Solution 2

Just finding this thread which confirms that 1) not having Smart Gesture is a blessing and 2) there is no way to scroll or get advanced touchpad functions without SG or some other horrible software installed

is a great service!

I had Smart Gesture and every time when I was typing and touched the pad by accident then Cortana would fire up and take me out of my typing.

Uninstalling Cortana requires editing the registry and Cortana may get reinstalled involuntarily with Win10 update. So I didn't want to do that. But when I reinstalled Windows 10 due to another issues (wireless) suddenly voilà! the problem - Smart Gesture - was gone!

Elsewhere by the way, Asus support explains that there is no setting in SG to disable smart gesture.

So if you have to, just reinstall windows!

Comments

[Ramhound]

Windows 10 is focus on touch-oriented when it comes to touchscreens, a touchpad gesture, isn't something Microsoft would focus on.

[Rhymoid]

@Ramhound Sounds like a missed opportunity for code reuse.

[Ramhound]

Perhaps; touchpad environment is a good bit different then touchscreen

[Rhymoid]

Guess I need to write a driver of my own. The link to the "Windows Precision Touchpad" guide could help me there. Thanks!

[SuperSpy]

@Rhymoid, how did the driver plan work out?

[Rhymoid]

@SuperSpy I have not yet found the time to work on it, and I will probably never try it. It turned out to be much more pragmatic to ignore the touchpad and plug in a mouse/touchpad/other pointer device. Besides, I'll switch to Debian next week, because Windows 10 has proven to be a hindrance to my occupation as a data engineer.

[HUSMEN]

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