Lightroom Touchpad Scrollbar Fix

Lightroom and Synaptics touchpads (trackpads) don’t seem to play well together but climbbike1 at the Adobe forums posted a registry fix that worked for me.

I’m not sure what it does, but as stated the little scrollbar graphic that was popping up wherever my mouse was positioned no longer appears after applying this fix (a good thing as it seems to be related to the problem). I was having a similar problem with a few other apps I rarely use under Windows 8.1 and didn’t have the problem when using a proper mouse. Note the Control Panel –> Mouse applet/Synaptics tab reports that I’m running Synaptics Touchpad V7.2 on PS/2 and Device Manager states the Driver Version as 15.0.24.0 (I just installed the latest driver when building the Windows 8.1 machine).

Here’s how to implement climbbike1’s fix.

Option 1 – edit the registry directly:

1. With administrative rights on your Windows computer, run regedit.exe (either via Start –> Run or the search charm in Windows 8)
2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Synaptics\SynTPEnh
3. Right-click the SynTPEnh key and select New –> DWORD
4. Name your new DWORD UseScrollCursor
5. It’s value should be set to 0
6. If the key already exists when you complete step 2, modify the value instead
7. Restart the Synaptics processes (see below)

Option 2 – create and run a .reg file:

1. Open notepad and save the blank file to your desktop as fixscroll.reg (or whatever you want to call it)
2. Copy the italicised text below and paste it into your .reg file
3. Double-click the file to run it (with administrative rights)
4. Note I’m not sure if this will create the key if it doesn’t exist—follow the steps in option 1 to confirm it exists and is set correctly

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Synaptics\SynTPEnh]
"UseScrollCursor?"=dword:00000000

Restarting

You’ll need to restart a couple of Synaptics processes and can do this by either restarting your computer or following these steps:

1. Open Task Manager
2. Locate and end the Synaptics TouchPad Enhancements (SynTPEnh.exe) and Synaptics Pointing Device Helper (SynTPHelper.exe) processes
3. Restart those same processes by running them from your startup folder or locating the executables and double-clicking them

Lightroom was running while I made these changes and the fix had instant results—no need to restart Lightroom or Windows.

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Creative Zen Neeon 2 (2GB)

My wife bought the Creative Zen Neeon 2 (2GB) on Saturday for a mere $99 (AUD) from MYER. Shopbot and MyShopping were listing the same player from $179 to $226 at various online retailers so it all seems like a great deal from a big department store! 2GB is by no means huge but for the price you can't go wrong.

The sound quality on this device using the supplied earbuds is quite good with a nice range. We had the bass boost turned on initially and had to turn it off because some songs were distorting slightly. Bass response was still great.

The user interface isn't bad once you get used to it (my wife isn't a technophile and she cottoned on in no time) and the thumb wheel works quite well. I don't have huge hands but my hand did start getting tired after playing with the thing for a while. The unit has volume controls and a record button one side and a play/pause/power button on the other side with the thumb wheel. Neither of us have used the iPod wheel before so I guess we don't know what we're missing out on--and don't care!

The Zen plays MP3, WMA, and WAV formats. It also plays video but the video has to be transcoded using the supplied software. Images are viewable as JPGs. The radio reception was a little iffy and was coming in quite fuzzy while the FM radio on my mobile phone had crystal clear reception right beside the Zen. I haven't tried the line-in function yet. The display was nice and bright and the shiny black surface of the case didn't show too many fingerprints.

Without installing the software suite, we connected up to a USB 2.0 port off a Windows XP computer and were able to start copying files immediately. Transfer time wasn't exactly fast but nothing to complain about. The internal folder structure on the device is extremely logical and you could probably copy other files onto the player for moving to and fro. We also connected the device to a Windows Vista computer using slower USB 1.0 ports but the player wasn't recognised and we didn't persevere.

The unit came with earbuds, a USB cable, a line-in cable (1/8"), a lanyard, a DVD with a user manual and software, a printed user manual, and some stickers. The battery is built-in and presumably not user-serviceable. I'm pretty sure this thing has a 1-year warranty.

I don't think I'd pay full-price for a player of this size but at $99 the iPod and variants don't really compare.