MacBook and Vista – Fixing the trackpad on resume
Update: None of this is necessary anymore. Just install BootCamp 1.2
If you’re running Vista on a MacBook, you might be aware that installing the Apple Trackpad driver will let you scroll with the trackpad and let you right-click by holding two fingers on the trackpad and clicking the button (sadly there’s still no “tap” support, but hopefully that will come soon). You might also be aware that if you install the driver, it fails after resuming from sleep or hibernation, meaning you have no mouse input until you reboot or go into device manager and restart the driver.
Well, neither of those options was going to work for me, so here’s my solution. By the way, this assumes you have your machine set to be locked when it goes to sleep.
- Download DevCon.exe (free from Microsoft.com)
- Save it somewhere (I put it in Program Files\DevCon, but it shouldn’t matter where).
- Open the Task Scheduler (type “task” into the start menu to find it quickly).
- Click “Create Task” and give it a name (like “Fix stupid Apple driver”)
- Choose a user to run the task – should be a member of the machine’s Administrators group.
- Check the box that says “Run with highest privileges”
- Select the option to “Run whether user is logged on or not”
- Go to the Triggers tab and click New…
- Select “On Workstation Unlock” from the drop-down and click OK.
- Go to the Actions tab and click New…
- Point it at wherever you saved Devcon.exe
- In the “Add Arguments” field, type: restart USB\VID_05AC&PID_021A&MI_01
- The above string was one of the two Hardware IDs listed for my Apple Trackpad device (NOT the filter device). It’s possible yours might vary, so check in Device Manager to make sure it’s the same, especially if this one doesn’t work.
- Go to the Conditions tab and uncheck the box that says “Start the task only if the computer is on AC power”
- Click OK and verify the password for the account you chose for the task to run under.
Now test it out by putting your machine to sleep and waking it up. After unlocking it, you should find that your mouse works instantly! Huzzah!
Hmm, sorry for this post … It’s strange cuz it’s a stupid TrackBack sent automatically, wthell? 🙂
This and the previous post inspired me to go out and get a copy of vista today and install it on my macbook, everything does indeed run wonderfully – apart from the trackpad on wake-up. I’ve gone through the steps above (FYI – the Hardware ID is the same on my tackpad too) but it still needs me to disable and enable the trackpad in device manager to get it working again. I’ll have a play and if i find another solution will let you know.
Hey Alex – did you make sure and set it to the “run with highest privileges” option? And tell it to use an account in the Administrators group?
You can check in the Task Scheduler and see if it tried to run and failed (and should be able to get some kind of error message explaining the problem).
Also, you might have to set it up to run with the same user account you’re currently using – I haven’t tried it with a different one.
If you do figure out why it doesn’t work for you, please let me know so I can update the post!
I’d had all that set up right, fixed it in the end by disabling ‘User Account Control’ totally (which wasn’t playing nice with the brightness.exe either) and also had to change the command to ‘restart USB\Class_03’ and now it works fine.
I have a feeling this is like using a sledgehammer to knock in a nail but it’s doing the job
works great! thanks
Worked great using Alex’s change of ‘restart USB\Class_03’.
Thanks a bundle!
i’ve tried using the hardware Brandon gave, I’ve tried replacing it with other hardware ids that i thought might work, and i tried ‘restart USB\Class_03’
None of them worked. How do I know that I have the right hardware id?
Sleep doesn’t always work for me. I’ve enabled the hybrid sleep as S3 is the only config that the Macbook seems to support (powercfg /a). Anyone else have issues getting their Macbook Pro to sleep?
wow first off thanks so much…works like a charm! secondly im asking you because you seem extremely knowledgeable on the topic: I have a 1st gen black macbook and cannot get my speakers to work. ive followed all the instructions on the apple discussion board and it says the drivers are installed under the device manager but i get the message “No audio device is installed” when i try to open the volume mixer.
I found when testing this out that I was getting alot of errors returned from devcon. In messing around with it, I figured out it seems to want the hardware Id put in quotes.
entering it in:
restart “USB\VID_05AC&PID_021A&MI_01”
works for me from the command line at least. hope this helps
Thanks for the excellent tip, real lifesaver.
At first I couldn’t get it to work, but after following Joe’s (#11) tip above — to the letter — it works!
I’m a happier camper.
Spoke too soon. Still not working, worked exactly once.
Yeah… As I posted in the update on the page, it works for restoring the trackpad on resume, but the trackpad driver seems to still cause problems. Sometimes it prevents the machine from successfully going to sleep =/
I really hope Apple releases a fix soon.
If I figure out anything else soon I’ll post it here.
The Atheros 5008 driver is causing the hang on sleep — not the trackpad drivers. Replace the Atheros driver with the 12/2006 version and your Macbook will sleep and hibernate reliably. The drivers can be found under the following filename:
atheros ar-5008-6.0.2.75-9x2kxp
If your machine hangs on sleep, then it will also hang on disable of the Atheros card. You will need to bring Vista up in Safe Mode without Networking in order to uninstall the older Atheros driver prior to installing the new one. Once the newer driver is installed, you will be able to disable and enable the wireless network card without hanging. This will also take care of the intermittent audio skipping and low whine coming from the speakers.
Hi
Not sure I should admit this, but after it didn’t work, I realised that the devcon.exe was actually a self-extracting archive. So first you have to extract it, and get the devcon.exe in the i386 directory.
Doh!!
Works great though now, thanks
I have a MacBook Duo and recently updated the Atheros 5008 driver to 6.0.2.75. It is far better than the original driver (6.0.1.75) but it isn’t quite perfect. I still get intermittent lockups. I’ve gone as long as 6 hours without issue but sometimes I’ll lock up a dozen times in an hour. I know it is the Atheros driver because I have a little cheap USB WIFI dongle I was using prior to 6.0.2.75 coming out that works flawlessly. The driver is actually a Thinkpad package and so I did some searching. It so happens that the Thinkpad T60 has the same chipset as the MacBook and there is another package available that is version 7.2.0.125. The driver installs fine and indicates it is enabled and running but the new driver is not compatible with older Atheros client for the 6.x drivers and I can’t figure out how to turn on the antenna without the Atheros client. There is a new Atheros client on the Lenovo site but it indicates a prerequisite of some other IBM drivers that seem illogical for the MacBook. I’ve not worked out all the issues on where to find the latest drivers but there’s still a little work to be done on this Atheros thing.
Hi I just bought an ASUS notebook and Vista Home Premium yesterday and I experienced similar trackpad problems:
1. The notebook hangs without anything on the screen after several “sleeps” and there is no hard-reboot button on the notebook! I have to cut the power (hot unplug of the battery) in order to reboot it.
2. Sometimes I click on the “save” or “yes”/”no” dialogue box and there is no response – the color of the explorer’s frame fades ?? What does that mean?
3. Sometimes the click function of the trackpad has no response but the cursor moves well.
Are these Vista problems or hardware problems? Hope someone can help. My Vista experience is quite disappointing.
Just a note that the ‘restart “USB\Class”‘ worked for me.
FYI I also run as a “standard user” so that UAC will prompt for a password every time. I set up the Admin account called “root” so that it mimics my OS X and linux workstations. Since I’m not logged in as that user i thought i would let you know that your workaround DID indeed work. The only issue is that when you start the Task Scheduler to create this task you need to “run as administrator”. So right click on the Task Scheduler icon and click “run as administrator”, otherwise when it comes time to “save” your task, you will be prompted with the Admin account and the password, but you will get an error message telling you that you don’t have the right username, password to create this action. I was confused thinking my “run as user x” and it’s password weren’t setup correctly. But it simply means that the task itself cannot be created.
Everything is working great! Thanks for the tip!
I had the same problem as #16. After that realization, everything works now. Thanks!
I have just bought an ASUS W2P with Vista Ultimate and have had the same problem as #18 item 2.
Can you help me solve the “Fix Trackpad On Resume” for Windows XP.
Hi,
After installing Vista everything worked extremly great, except my speakers… They are external, I tried everything you guys said but it still doesn’t work, can anyone please help?
Thanks so much, Mike
Can you send to me driver trackpad for macbook. My macbook now has only winvista and now can’t
go back to Mac OS X. So I cant use Bootcamp.
Please help. Thanks
Can you send to me driver trackpad for macbook. My macbook now has only winvista and now can’t
go back to Mac OS X. So I cant use Bootcamp.
Please help. Thanks
quangnetdpi@gmail.com
Hmmm. I like the post, but it’s a bit subjective to be honest. Not that my opinion matters 🙂 Keep posting!