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Neverending Wacom driver issues of doom

greentooth
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fearian greentooth
So I know I'm not alone in saying that I've been having a ton of problems with Wacom Drivers for a long time. However recently things have escalated.

I got fed up with the myriad of issues a few months back when one day the Wacom configuration utility stopped working and downloaded the latest win7 drivers; the result was UDK refused to launch, Photoshop would crash on launch, and 3ds Max would crash whenever a caddy or quad menu popped up. Uninstalling or installing new drivers wouldnt fix these huge fuckups and I used a system restore point to reverse the damage, and left myself stuck with old shitty drivers and no configuration tools or program preferences.

I got fed up again the other night and tried once more to update my drivers. I updated to Driver 6.3.3-4 and had the same fucking problems. This time I don't seem to have a system restore point and a massive chunk of programs either refuse to launch or crash on launch.

Has anyone had this issue before? Can anyone shed light on how Wacom drivers could fuck with so many programs?

And more to the point, how can I safely remove all and every trace of Wacom drivers from my system to try and start from a clean slate?

Thanks for any help guys.

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  • r_fletch_r
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    r_fletch_r polycounter lvl 9
    here's a link for removing the drivers

    I've never had any quite so severe. seems like it might be more than those drivers going wrong.

    that said the wacom drivers are a total fecking mess. we had massive problems at Work getting the cintiqs to function for more than 30 minutes without driver crashes. out of the box they were totally unuseable. (we had to revert to older drivers to make em function)

    usually i keep my drivers up to date but with wacom it seems to be a case of find one that works and stick with it. the newer ones keep getting worse and worse.
  • BARDLER
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    BARDLER polycounter lvl 12
    Sounds like you have a larger issue at hand with your OS possibly. Try to uninstall the drivers by hand in the registry if you know how, if not then try revo uninstaller to get rid of it.
  • dirigible
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    dirigible polycounter lvl 8
    If the most recent wacom drivers are giving you problems, then don't use the most recent wacom drivers. I've had to resort to this, in the past. Actually I think I am still using old wacom drivers.

    So yeah. If their shit breaks, don't use it.
  • BeatKitano
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    BeatKitano polycounter lvl 16
    r_fletch_r wrote: »
    here's a link for removing the drivers

    I've never had any quite so severe. seems like it might be more than those drivers going wrong.

    that said the wacom drivers are a total fecking mess. we had massive problems at Work getting the cintiqs to function for more than 30 minutes without driver crashes. out of the box they were totally unuseable. (we had to revert to older drivers to make em function)

    usually i keep my drivers up to date but with wacom it seems to be a case of find one that works and stick with it. the newer ones keep getting worse and worse.


    Wacom's going down. No seriously over the 30 24hd we have at work we already have almost half of them going into aftersale, my home one got twice to aftersale for black screen problem and is going for a third time monday morning since it simply "burned" (with heavy smell and all!) last friday...

    Drivers are another issue ofc, but the quality of their latest products is definitely shit...
    I'm looking at alternative, already contacted Hanvon for custom made tablet for work and home for when the last of the cintiqs lose their warranty, we'll see how that goes but I for sure won't be buying wacom tablet anytime soon and I was a pretty loyal customer (got every intuos except v1 and a few cintiqs).
  • fearian
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    fearian greentooth
    Thanks for the sympathy rants guys :) Makes me feel better!
    r_fletch_r wrote: »
    here's a link for removing the drivers

    I've never had any quite so severe. seems like it might be more than those drivers going wrong.

    Thanks fletch, that method cleaned out the drivers and all their related problems. As BARLDER said, I'm sure this was a symptom of a larger OS problem or conflict because it really doesn't make much sense. I'll probably try a windows repair soon.

    Now to pick a driver and hope it works... the oldest drivers where missing functionality and some of the newer drivers broke everything so I'm going to randomly pick 6.2 and trial and error from there.

    bloody hell.
  • fearian
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    fearian greentooth
    6.3.1w3 Is working fine for me on windows 7 64bit, so if anyone googles their way to this, try it I guess? I'm never changing drivers again.
  • thomasp
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    thomasp hero character
    sorry to hear. i have regular infuriating trouble with wacom tablets on my work machine as well. i do blame windows 7 and it's built-in tablet components and the windows updates that reset my tweaks for most of it though.
  • DavePhipps
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    DavePhipps polycounter lvl 7
    Odd I've never had a problem on my Win 7 PC. I'm using an old Intuos 2 though. I have had problems with my TC4400. Now and then the ISD Dual touch driver just stop and a quick reinstallof the driver works wonders.

    Is this more of an issue with their newer products and drivers?
  • SpeCter
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    SpeCter polycounter lvl 14
    DavePhipps wrote: »
    Odd I've never had a problem on my Win 7 PC. I'm using an old Intuos 2 though. I have had problems with my TC4400. Now and then the ISD Dual touch driver just stop and a quick reinstallof the driver works wonders.

    Is this more of an issue with their newer products and drivers?

    No even older tablets have problems ranging from OS weirdness(Vista/7 shipping with some shitty tablet services which screw up a lot like flickering/disappearing quad menus) or refusing to use sensitivy after you switched to another window.
    My all time "favorite" is when photoshop casually uses full pressure on some strokes despite barely touching the tablet.(this is driver related and can be solved with older or some newer drivers).

    I wrote a program to deal with the windows weirdness at least.
  • BeatKitano
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    BeatKitano polycounter lvl 16
    I like how my pressure sentivity simply go away when I use alt tab sometimes. I need to alt tab back to the other app, click there, then alt tab back to the app i plan to use, click on the window and get cranking.

    LOGICAL !
  • Mask_Salesman
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    Mask_Salesman polycounter lvl 13
    I've found it's not so much the Wacom as it is win7 trying to be helpfully but being a bitch. I get little alt or Ctrl pop ups when I try to use a Wacom with max, this prevents view rotation navigation and often just causes max to crash. Apparently it's called wistips.exe or similar, which you need to reg edit just to uninstall.

    So look up how windows is trying to unhelpfully assist you. That may help?

    Everything worked fine on xp for me, I've only run into a crap now I'm on win7, including that need to alt tab out of PS to get pressure sensitivity back... :/
  • SpeCter
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    SpeCter polycounter lvl 14
    For most of the part wisptis is responsible, but that´s only a part of windows vista/7 tablet annoyances.
  • Twotents
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    Twotents polycounter lvl 4
    The only real problem I seem to have is the orientation of the tablet, I am left handed and both of the usb ports on the tablet register as right handed on my pc. So I sit fairly awkwardly when I use my tablet >.< Tried a ton of fixes except a formatting of my pc.

    Everything works fine other than the left hand right hand confusion so too much effort for a clean system format.
  • lysaara
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    lysaara polycounter lvl 9
    Does anyone know if Win8 and its touchscreen-centric design makes the tablet issues worse, or better maybe? I'm thinking about grabbing a copy while it's cheap(and leaving off actually installing until SP1 at least) but my tablet works pretty smoothly after taking a hacksaw approach to Win7's awful tabletPC options, and I'd rather not disrupt that if possible.
  • g0th
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    g0th triangle
    I got some problems with wacoms as well. Our it support told me that sometimes the windows tablet features can mess with the wacom drivers.

    To turn them off do this.
    control panel,
    programs and features,
    turn windows features on or off (to the left on the screen)
    unclick the tablet folder.
  • Wiggles
    Huh seems like nobody had Wacom issues in 2013..Maybe I'm running behind facts but i'm gonna post my solution anyways.
    After re
  • monster
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    monster polycounter
    Wiggles wrote: »
    ...After re
  • thomasp
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    thomasp hero character
    Wiggles wrote: »
    Huh seems like nobody had Wacom issues in 2013.

    i've had wacom driver problems on OSX at home in 2013 (after purchasing an intuos 5 and having to upgrade the driver to support that). does that count? ;)

    the solution at work with win 7 was to just send the PC with the wacom driver running correctly to hibernate in the evenings and not ever shut it down fully (no windows updates, no workflow fuckups). lets say IT did not exactly favour this approach but it conserved my sanity for the rest of the project.

    iss it reasonable to assume that on windows 8 and 8.1 everthing is just fine?
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