Thinkpad X240 fingerprint reader stopped working

Hello folks,

I received my brand new X240 with touch FHD screen last week and today my fingerprint reader has stopped working all of a sudden. I have configured my fingerprint reader to log me into windows and I had also downloaded the latest update of Lenovo Fingerprint Manager Pro (8.01.05). Within device manager, I do not see any "Biometric devices" node anymore and instead an unrecognized USB device has shown up:



The fingerprint reader is enabled in the BIOS (External -> Internal) and I have not made any changes there. Strange thing is that it was working fine all day when I was waking up the machine from sleep and all of a sudden it stopped working. Anybody has any ideas before I call Lenovo support?

 

The same thing happened to me. It just disappeared. I was able to get it back after downloading the drivers from the Lenovo site. BTW, the same thing happened to me with Bluetooth, but it took a lot more trial and error to get Bluetooth back.

 

Try the following out on both of them - fingerprint sensor as well as bluetooth adapter. It seems to work for me. Uncheck that box:

 

Thanks for the info! I'm hoping that helps with my Thinkpad Bluetooth Mouse and Thinkpad Compact Keyboard. It seems that after a certain amount of time it looses the connection and the only thing to bring it back up is to turn off bluetooth and then turn it back on (on the thinkpad itself, not the bluetooth devices).

I see that you were able to get your fingerprint reader back on? Did you reinstall the drivers?

 

Didnt have to reinstall drivers. I switched off the machine, took the battery out and then turned it back and made the changes I suggested to you and ever since it has been doing ok. Do post back your results since I am sure more and more people would be running into this issue.

 

How did it work out for you? Oh BTW there is an updated driver for the fingerprint sensor:

Lenovo Fingerprint Manager Pro for Windows 8.1 (32-bit, 64-bit), 8 (32-bit, 64-bit), 7 (32-bit, 64-bit) - Notebook

 

My Bluetooth mouse has not disconnected in the 5+ hours that I've been at work which is a good sign.

As for the fingerprint reader, I've finally gotten it to work properly and didn't realize I was pressing down too hard with my fingers when trying to register it, but regardless I haven't had any problems thus far.

 

Good to hear. I dont use a bluetooth mouse or any other bluetooth device so I can comment on it, however, after making these changes, the fingerprint reader has been working fine. So I guess, windows was shutting down the device to save power and it could not 'wake' up per-se and hence it would disappear from device manager.