New Elantech and Asus Smart Gesture drivers, how are they?

ASUSTeK Computer Inc. -Support- Drivers and Download Touchpad

New Smart Gesture driver released on Sept 24th and new Elantech on the 25th. Very interested to hear your experiences with either, especially if you own a Zenbook Prime and whether palm detection is any better.

 

Hi, as I just purchased a Asus K55A notebook, and am quite enamoured with it...
I have D/L and installed the latest Asus Smart Gesture driver....however upon restarting I can not find it in my Mouse properties....anywhere?
Asus Smart Gestures: 1.0.32

I had the Elan driver installed...and it definately shows up in Mouse Properties: 10.9.50

ASUSTeK Computer Inc. -Support- Drivers and Download K55A

I have just tried the latest Elan driver 11.5.09...as I know that this is generic driver from the Asus website...but it too does not show up in Mouse properties..

My biggest concern was the dam jumping curser in Win7...

The incredible moving cursor: why your cursor jumps around when typing on your Windows 7 laptop | Gadget Writing

But with Asus Smart Gesture driver and the latest Elan driver (both mentioned above)...I can not find where the settings are...lol
Thanks...nice forums

 

If it's anything like the last version, the (very) few settings they haven't hidden completely are available when you open the "SmartarseGesture" program. If it doesn't hang, and the process wants to drain your ram and processor time..

I'd recommend avoiding the program altogether, use the Elantech driver pack, and spam support with complaints.

 

Does the Elantech driver pack support the gestures for windows 8 ?

 

I don't know. If you mean swipe, three-finger scroll, zoom, multitouch, that sort of thing. Then yes.

Asus basically just made a wrapper for the elantech driver, and removed a bunch of functions from it the last time.

 

Hey nipsen,

Thanks as that is what I suspected...after doing some more Google searches..
I have a Logitech M310 mouse with the latest Logitech Setpoint drivers and was thinking possibly this was the culprit for not letting me the see the settings for the "SmartarseGesture" program...lol!

At least with the Asus supported Elantech driver on the Asus support site v10.9.50...it allows me to uncheck the dam tab feature on the touchpad so I can regain my sanity...and be able to type in emails, forums...etc...without going nuts...lol

I was curious that the latest Elantech drivers...generic on the Asus support site 11.5.09 also 'did not' show up in my Mouse properties...probably a propriety aspect...related to my laptop...
Looks as if these are support for Win8...

Thanks again...:thumbsup:

 

Np. So do the search on the asus site for touchpad drivers, find the listing independent of laptop model. And pick the older driver before the Smartgesture drivers. Note that you can't pick the older drivers very quickly from the n56 page under "mouse", etc. You need to get the touchpad driver listing entry.

I mean, honestly -- getting very fed up with Asus over the aftermarket care here. There were a lot of complaints when they updated the Smartgesture program automatically, and they actually pulled it from the updates the first time around. And then they redo the same thing again, make minimal changes to it -- and just submit it again, doing exactly the same as before. Somehow missing the fact that removing 3/4ths of the functions from the control panel, and forcing another memory hungry application with ten unnecessary services running - that that was the actual problem.

Same attitude as with the memory timing. They don't change the memory timing. They just release another version of the laptop -- and then put the same braindead timing on it. They have fifteen different laptops, with completely different hardware, that all have the same bios settings. Just... unbelievable.

 

Once again nipsen,

Thanks m8, as I was able to upgrade from my current ElanTech v: 10.5.9.0 dated 2/20/2012 to v: 10.5.10 dated 5/10/2012 (generic driver on ASUS support site...and the settings/properties do show up in my Mouse Properties....

I am just getting use to the overall ASUS Support site...and do feel your frustration, but hell I got a really good deal$$$ on the K55A model at BestBuy...and really can not complain...as I just researched and I can up grade ist 4GB DDR3 memory that came factory installed to 8GB DDR3....with another stick for $40-50....very nice...

 

I have the n56vz, and this is by far the number 1 annoyance I have. Cursor jumping around and accidentally clicking things from palm touching the trackpad while typing. When I go to the troubleshooting page on the asus website, there is a feature on the elantech setting called "Palm Tracking" which fixes the problem (well I hope it does). I do not see this feature on my laptop's elantech settings. So I dled and installed the latest driver V11.5.0.9, currently I have V10.5.9.0 , but the elan touchpad setting was grayed-out after. And had to do a lot of uninstalling and reinstalling to revert it back to stock for my touchpad because the hotkey fn- f9 stopped working, and I finally just got it back to work again.

My question is, how can I get this Palm Tracking feature? Which updated version can I download that is compatible with my laptop?

 

For all Asus users i suggest using the newest Elantech drivers from Acer, more custom and closer to the real drivers.

 

Which ones work? I've started using the trackpad again lately, and the multi function gestures don't work!
Ive uninstalled and reinstalled origional Asus Smart Gesture. Got version .32 and .35 from the support website but it still dosen't work grr.
Can't seem to find the programme to change settings, can only find it if I go to Add/Remove Programmes.

 

I've been using them and I like them quite a bit. I believe that a lot of users complain but with the updated drivers it makes for an excellent used experience with Windows 8!

 

What Asus model are you using?

 

Hi everyone, recently got an N76VZ on Windows 7, and the trackpad sensitivity had been bugging me since day 1 like many of you here.
I tried to fiddle with the hidden settings, like increasing the palm sensitivity to the max PLUS installing Touch Freeze, which seemed to have mitigated the issue, but still not good enough. In the end I installed the latest Asus Smart Gesture found on the web, and everything began to work fine.
In comparison with the Elan driver, palm detection has greatly improved - cursor no longer jumps. This seemed to made possible by decreasing the overall sensitivity of the trackpad, because two-finger scrolling will struggle to register if I put the two fingers too close (<0.5cm?) when it previously worked perfectly fine. One finger tracking also takes a second to register at times.
Another improvement is that the inertial scrolling now glides a hell lot more smoothly, though not yet butter smooth, it's a whole lot better than previously on Elan (so choppy I disabled it)
Last but not least, the Smart Gesture driver seemed to have replaced my Elan driver completely. Although that is not an issue to me, the setting page for the trackpad is no where to be found which may be a problem to some of you who won't like the default settings.

Btw, before installing the latest Smart Gesture, you have to remove the old ATK package, reboot, install the lastest ATK package found on the web, reboot again, and then install Smart Gesture.

Update:
My bad, the Smart Gesture does create a system tray, no sensitivity settings though, just a bunch of on/off switches

 

This is all great information. As I mentioned in another thread, I have a 2 week old N56VZ-SX71 running Win7. I love everything about it EXCEPT the damn jumping cursor (well, that and the inability to reverse the Fn/action keys' default). I've tried the recommended driver updates, but nothing is helping. Will follow this thread and continue trying fixes. I hope I come up with something, as I really like this machine, but the cursor jumping is driving me batty, and has ruined a number of emails and typed text files, as well as making surfing infuriating. Thanks again.

 

I bought a laptop just like this myself because the specs are really quite nice. And I am absolutely in love with it. Totally and completely. Until I tried the touchpad, which was just all over the place and clicking and shifting and doing stuff seemingly without me even being near it sometimes. As I read your post a weight literally lifted from me. I was pondering sending this back purely because of the touchpad, and that honestly made me quite sad because the laptop is so impeccably awesome in all other areas.

So I followed all of your suggestions with high hopes, and it worked!!! As I write this message to you the mouse has barely moved. It was like the mouse was having some kind of ADHD fit before, moving and clicking all over the place, and it is fixed! Thank you thank you thank you! Using my laptop now feels the way it's supposed to. There seems to be some clicks showing up still, but it is nowhere near of what it was.

The problem mostly was that during typing all this would go haywire, and that seems to be solved. The only thing I maybe could want a bit more of is customization within the gestures themselves. Such as turning off horizontal stuff but not vertical for example, but that's peanuts compared to what this was before this update. I'm willing to bet that ASUS realized that Elan made a huge mess with the whole touchpad thing and released their own drivers just to salvage the situation.

 

Not entirely correct.

I've been using my N56VZ for about a month now (3630qm, full HD, win7) and I'm very happy with it (both cpu intensive and some gaming, nice!). I've tried few touchpad drivers, and while the latest (11.5.21 from asus site) does hide the elantech control panel, it's still accessible. All you need is to run ETDAniConf.exe from the INSTALL package (at \x64), and you get all the configuration which this driver supports (which is more than 10.5.90). It's not available at the control-panel/mouse nor as a tray icon, but your changes will stick across reboots and after opening the smart gestures panel, which is good enough. I also didn't experience excessive ram or cpu usage from the touchpad related drivers/utils.

Overall, the above is what I'll recommend for most users.

However, one might still wish to try the 11.13.0.2 driver, as it differs a bit from asus 11.5.21, as follows:
- It provides configurable 2/3 fingers taps.
- it adds edge scroll.
- 3 fingers swipe up/down are my-computer/alt-tab instead of win-tab/show-desktop.

However:
- 3 fingers swipe left/right don't work.
- fn-F9 doesn't work
- there's a crash from ElanTPCfg64.exe after boot and when using fn-f9. The crashes can be solved by renaming "C:\Program Files (x86)\ASUS\ATK Package\ATK Hotkey\ElanTPCfg64.exe" to anything else. It can still be disabled enabled via the control panel, and also possibly enabled only when a mouse is not connected.

I've also tried few other drivers, and these are my conclusions about them:

- SmartGesture_Compal_Z1035
- only basic smartgestures, ETDAniConf.exe NOT providing any useful config

- 14.1.3
- adds configureable Type rejection (meh)
- otherwise, less features than elantech_touchpad_11.13.0.2allos

- Touchpad_Elantech_Win7_64_Z10590 (Asus)
- adds smart detector (area to reject/less-sensitive) (meh)
- otherwise, less features than Touchpad_Elantech_Win7_64_Z11521

I'm using 11.13.0.2 for now, because I like configurable 3F tap and edge scroll. Not sure if I'll stick with it though.

 

Hello,
Where can I find the Elantech drivers independent of Asus smart gesture software? I am unhappy with the latest Asus Smart Gesture and would like to try those drivers alone.

Post edit: Never mind. I found it on Asus webpage. It seems things have improved overall though I am not sure. I still have problem with scrolling down using two fingers: it is slow and not quite responsive. Double tapping also sometimes doesn't register though after installing the new Elantech driver, I think this one has got better.

 

Does that version have the "smart area" thing? That disables two-finger touches or extra touches in general outside a set radius..?

 

No, but it does have configurable "Palm Tracking" (single slider which I set to the max), which I find quite effective.

I use the KB quite a lot while the touchpad is enabled with highest sensitivity, yet I rarely get unintended cursor movements (and even those are not more than few pixels), and I never got an unintentional click, while it still reacts perfectly (or at least not worse than other drivers which I tried) to intentional usage.

 

Newest elan drivers gave me a "stopped" working message on boot

N43SM Win7 64

/:

 

Hello! I have a Notebook Asus N61JV-X2 with Windows 8 Pro X64. I installed Asus Smart Gesture and work fine. The problem is FN+F9 not work (Enable/disable touchpad). Any know a solution for this?

Thanks!


Note: Asus N61JV-X2 haven't oficial drivers for Windows 8. I download generic drivers from Asus Website.


UPDATE: Now works!!! FN+F9 Work.

Instructions:

1 - Install:

1 - Touchpad_Elanteh_Pega_Win7_Win8_Z11509
2 - SmartGesture_ASUS_Win7_8_VER1036 (antes instalar ATKPackage)

2 - Restart

3 - Unistall ASUS SmartGesture. Restart

4 - ASUS SmartGesture still in system tray ... But if I uninstall it? I try FN + F9 and ... Now works!

So now not show the animation on screen as Windows 7.


With ASUS SmartGesture function does not work up three fingers (similar to Alt + Tab). And you?

Grettings

 

Now Works!!! Update

 

..every time I see the thread title, I think it says "New ...... smartgesture drivers, how SMART are they?"

Do they actually work now? Last time I installed it, I couldn't change the sensitivity setting afterwards.

 

I've been reading about these supposed "Elantech drivers" for some time, but very few links to their actual location...

I finally found some Elantech touchpad drivers on Asus' website here. I currently have installed the latest driver update from 3 days ago, "Elantech Touchpad driver", version V11.5.5.2.

So far I have only used it for a couple of hours, but my initial impression is WOW this is so much better than the ones provided specifically for the UX31A. Pointing is accurate, 2-finger scrolling is much smoother (than the latest Smart Gesture version 36), and palm rejection keeps me from clicking elsewhere on the page.

I did notice that even after uninstalling the Smart Gesture driver (I left the ATK package the same), and installing the Elantech touchpad driver from Asus, I still have an "ASUS Smart Gesture" icon in the system tray to make changes, with the usual on/off toggles and no ability to change sensitivities.

Are there other Elantech drivers people are using from another source (e.g. Acer) that work for the UX31A? If so, could you please post the link? Thanks.

 

Sorry, but I'm in a hurry and can't locate the link I used but I recently installed the latest Acer Elantech drivers and they offer by far the best uX31A trackpad experience. One big advantage over the Smart Gesture drivers - even the newest ones that work fairly well - and I believe even Elantech's own drivers - is that these Acer drivers enable you to make adjustments such as the speed of two finger scrolling where I found most of the others only allow you to turn them on or off. I just goggled Acer Elantech drivers and it took me right to the page. I uninstalled the drivers I was running and also the ATK drivers and then reinstalled them. Don't know if that made a diff but it was recommended elsewhere.

 

Thanks... I tried the Google search but I'm finding all sorts of drivers from various websites for various Acer models with different version numbers and operating systems. If you wouldn't mind finding that link when you do have a chance I would really appreciate it!!

EDIT: So I've been combing through the various Elantech touchpad drivers available for newer Acer models on their driver site, and the newest ones I find are 11.6.6.002 (180.3 MB, under Aspire S3) and 11.6.8.001 (181.1 MB, under Aspire S5 and S7). I will try the latter since it is the latest build that I see, even though it dates back to 10/2012.

 

So I just installed Elantech touchpad driver 11.6.8.001 from the Acer website ( link). I located it under the Acer S7 model. So far it seems to be working well with the Asus UX31A-BHI5T11. As lovelaptops suggested, I uninstalled both the old touchpad and ATK drivers, then installed the Elantech touchpad driver, restarted, installed the Asus ATK driver, restarted. Like you said, this one definitely has more customization (reverse scrolling, sensitivity, palm rejection, etc) than the ones offered by Asus. Why, Asus, why??

Wow, touch sensitivity settings are really an improvement. I don't have to bang on my touchpad to make it click things!

 

am I the only one having better luck with the latest asus touchpad driver? just to see, I uninstalled both the asus touchpad and atk. installed the elantech one and reinstalled atk drivers. basically followed your instructions. it got bad for me. scrolling was super slow and laggy, I even played around with the elantech settings. no improvements. went back to the asus drivers. way better for me. I guess its different for everyone.

 

I'm currently trying to resolve the following issues with UX32VD's touchpad - those are driving me mad to a point where I sometimes regret buying this machine:
1) Even the slightest fluctuations in the pressure applied to the touchpad when moving the cursor/scrolling are detected as a 'click' action, sometimes more than one in a rapid succession. This is especially painful when using two-finger-scrolling: a contextual menu is displayed, then it selects a first item in a list and so on - the final result that you don't know what is going on eg. when browsing the 'back' action is selected. When just moving the cursor, this results in random clicks or starting of the selection action.
2) Two finger scrolling is too often detected as pinch-to-zoom.
3) Bad palm rejection
4) No threshold on Win8 gestures - usually results in showing the charms menu after giving a slight dab to the right side of the touchpad

The first two issues are the worst. I could theoretically disable those gestures (pinch to zoom, two finger tap) but it wouldn't sove the underlying problem ie. messed up pressure threshold.

I've already tried the latest "native" Elantech drivers and the latest ones from the Asus website but neither solve the problems 100%.
I was hoping that someone may be able to give some advice about other versions / sources that solve the issues mentioned above.

 

@simpl3lang: I also noticed the scrolling was a little more jumpy with the Acer 11.6.8.001 Elantech driver. But at least it can scroll in small increments (which the latest from Asus does not), and the jumpiness is almost entirely smoothed out for me by a Chrome browser extension called Chromium Wheel Smooth Scroller. If you haven't already, you might like the generic Elantech driver provided by Asus. It can be found on their drivers page under components instead of under notebooks.

@optik: I have not had your issues with number 1 or 4. I have rectified number 2 by turning off pinch-to-zoom, which is better than it trying to zoom in all the time, though a loss if you use this feature frequently (I do not). As to number 3, I have noticed much better palm rejection on both the generic Elantech touchpad driver from Asus' website (under components) and from Acer's website.

 

swenpro, here is a video I made to show how my trackpad is. for me it is good enough. currently using the latest asus driver/software. running the latest on your machine, is it about the same experience?

 

Hi all.

In case anybody's interested, I just tried Elan driver 11.7.8.5 (says Samsung branded) on my Asus UX21E and I find it quite a bit better than the Asus smart gesture. Only thing I've found doesn't work is FN+F9 doesn't work (to shut off trackpad). Maybe the procedure in post #22 will work but I don't care to try since I never shut off my trackpad.

http://www.station-drivers.com/telechargement/elantech/Elan_touchpad_11.7.8.5(www.station-drivers.com).exe

 

hi tummy, the post I made above yours, can you have a look at the video and compare it to the experience you are having with your current setup.

 

Thanks! This driver finally brings on the much sought-after two-finger right-click that has been lacking in previous Asus and Elantech drivers.

Not to mention the inertial scroll on the 11.7.8.5 drivers is finally macbook-like buttery smooth scrolling in Chrome without the need for an add-on.

 

Sure, but I'm sorry - I'm not quite sure what aspect of your video I'm comparing to. Do you mean like the smoothness of the scroll? I'm not sure I really notice the "jumpiness" you referred to in the post containing your video. But if I had to make a guess, I would have to say I think mine is a bit smoother. I know it's definitely better than the Asus smart gesture which had some finger detection problems and what not for me. I also particularly like the palm detection which works very well for me (on Asus drivers it drove me nuts - my mouse would always jump around).

PS control panel indicates these are Samsung branded drivers.

Hope this helps!

 

Looks okay from what I can tell... to clarify, are you using the Asus driver specifically for the UX31A (versions 36)? or the Asus driver for the Elantech touchpad under component drivers?

 

Im using the latest touchpad driver for the ux31a on asus website.

 

After testing a bunch of different touchpad drivers I have found this one to be the best, by far.

Touchpad rating: 8/10

I have also hosted the driver here: Elan_touchpad_11.7.8.5


Important: Control Panel -> Touchpad:

View attachment 91490

Click advanced:

View attachment 91491

This will make the touchpad very stable, smooth and non-jumpy.

Only thing I'm missing is the same as Tummy wrote, the fn+F9 button to disable touchpad manually as I use external mouse (Razer Orochi) and sometimes I move around and want to quickly enable/disable without disconnecting the Orochi.

 

I like the new touchpad driver having intertial scrolling that's actually smooth and not choppy. I was previously on 11.7.2.1. However, the feature I really miss is the drag and drop on my previous driver allowed me to double tap and hold, then move the file with a different finger than the one that did the tapping. I may have to revert because I liked that feature so much.

Maybe they'll add it back in in a future release?

EDIT: Low speed two finger scrolling seems less accurate.

 

Yup, this 11.7.8.5 seems the best for now. Most features (and all of them work), nicest UI. This is it for now

 

Anyone got a clue how I can make fn+F9 (enable/disable touchpad) work without the ASUS touchpad suite? Using the Elan_touchpad_11.7.8.5 that I recommended in my previous post.

 

Just a heads up: I have reverted from the 11.7.8.5 driver as they at least on my ux51vz seems to cause serious crashes/resets. The computer turns off and when looking at the event log the Elantech driver have logged an application error just before the crash.

 

Just got a new N56VJ-DH71 and while I'm mostly happy with the touchpad performance when it works, Smart Gesture seems to periodically drop off or "unload" itself. It disappears from the tray, and all but the most basic gestures stop working; I can move the cursor and left and right click. This is a real nuisance in Windows 8. Even running the .exe files in the Smart Gesture folder do not restart it. Rebooting fixes the problem, but it has happened several times now and I'd like a real fix.

How do I see what driver number I'm running? Smart Gesture has no info, and Device Manager just shows me the ASUS PS/2 driver 1.0.0.148. To try one of the newer Elantech drivers, what do I need to do? Just stop Smart Gesture and install the new download from Asus? How do I revert to my current version if something goes wrong?

 

11.7.8.5 from here seems to working well for many, myself included (except for toggling touchpad using FN+F9, but you can set it to be enabled automatically when a mouse is not connected) : ELANTECH Drivers

Note that it has newer drivers there, which I haven't tested. Not all of them work the same, and there are different config windows (again, 11.7.8.5 seems the nicest here as well from what I tested).

To revert to smart gestures, you can reinstall it from a DVD which you might have gotten with your laptop, or just download and install the latest from Asus support site. Here as well, different versions may behave differently.

Before installing a new/different touchpad driver, I suggest to first uninstall the existing one(s).

 

I have 3 different laptops with Elan touchpads (two Asus and a Samsung) and all three have been frustrating. It's really sad this is such a widespread problem. I know someone who works for Intel on their Ultrabook certification program and they've heard widespread complaints about touchpad issues and are working on some testing/certification manufactures would have to pass to use the Ultrabook trademark.

But even Intel's weight doesn't seem to be having much influence on Asus in Taiwan or Samsung in Korea. Both are still offering relatively old and outdated Elan drivers for most of their models. And Asus has tried to patch up the problem with their usual half-baked, constantly changing, buggy and inconsistent crapware--i.e. "Smart Gesture"--which actually disables functionality and user options.

Why don't these manufactures tell Elan to fix the problems or switch to Synapatics? But they can't even seem to be bothered to offer anything even close to the latest drivers in their download areas. So we frustrated customers are forced to go to sketchy third party websites, or other manufactures, and try endless drivers until we find one that kind of works right (non-functional function keys, etc).

I hope Intel addresses this problem and starts testing touchpads for consistent and proper operation and doesn't let manufactures use their latest CPUs and chipsets if they can't pass the certification. It's just stupid there are so many palm issues, some scroll in opposite directions, some support 2 finger taps, some don't, cursors flying all over the place, etc, It's even worse with Win8 and the charms bar randomly popping up,

I second the comment a while back we all need to spam the manufactures asking when we'll get a real fix, post our frustrations where appropriate to alert others, and perhaps eventually someone who cares will take some notice and lean on Elan to properly fix the problems.

 

If you want fixed hardware with no configuration just buy a Mac. One example from your complaints that "some scroll in opposite directions" is because people using Apple products are used to scrolling one way while PC users are used to scroll the same way a mouse scroll wheel does - if one switch between Apple and PC then inverted scrolling is probably better while if one use PCs and a standard mouse the other direction makes more sense. The scroll direction is selectable for all recent touchpads I've seen if you don't like the default.
Windows 8 already standardizes many touchpad gestures BTW.

 

After uninstalling Smart Gesture, installing the 11.7.8.5 Elan drivers you recommended, and rebooting a couple times, I'm much happier with the touch pad performance. The drivers haven't "unloaded" during use or after awakening, and the Windows 8 gestures and two-finger context menu have also kept working consistently.

I don't see a way to reverse the scroll direction, but after only a few months with a Macbook, I'm OK unlearning the OS X scrolling method anyway.

Thanks!

 

I'm pretty happy with the latest Smart Gesture drivers from Asus, I don't know what you guys are on about What's the biggest advantage of installing the original Elantech drivers? Maybe I'm missing out.

 

The Elan drivers are a little more customizable. On my PC, Smart Gesture took a long time to load after boot and, after re-waking once or twice, they would totally stop working, disabling all the functions except cursor movement and left/right click. The Elan drivers have been rock solid so far and addressed all those problems.

If you're happy with it, no need to change anything!