MSI Touchpad Function key (Fn + F3) stopped working after Win10 Update 2020

J

Jac_W

Hi!

It took me a while of searching and tinkering to find a working solution and I decided to post it here.


After Windows 10 autoupdate on 21/07/20 my touchpad turned on and wouldn't listen to Fn + F3 (hotkeys to disabling/enabling touchpad). All other solutions that I found on Windows forums wouldn't work.


1. Under [Device Manager -> Mice and other pointing devices] I had doubled [HID-compliant mouse] entries. In their [Properties], under [Location:] one said [on USB Input Device], another had [on SteelSeries Gaming Keyboard].

Trying to update drivers from this window did nothing. Said that they are up to date.

Under [Events] tab, there were 3 events with timestamps on the exact update day, saying: [Device not migrated], [Device configured (msmouse.inf)] and [Device started (mouhid)]


I assume that Windows Update somehow turned the Synaptic Driver (and any other mouse driver) into that [Hid-compliant mouse]. Disabling one with SteelSeries as location would turn off the touchpad, but doing so was taking a lot of click compared to using Fn key, making it slow to turn touchpad on and off.


2. Opening SynMsiDApp would give me [Unable to connect to the Synaptics Pointing Device Driver] error. Making troubleshooting there impossible.


3. Turns out the Windows Update had another restart scheduled for update called [Synaptics - Mouse - 19.531.19] (with 2 other updates). I forced it right away and suddenly SynMsiDApp started working. There a checkbox [Disable internal pointing device when external USB pointing device is attached] option almost fixed my problem, but I wanted to be able to turn on touchpad sometimes while having external mouse connected, too.


4. Looking again at the [Device Manager -> Mice and other pointing devices] a third driver appeared (after last restart), called [Synaptics SMBus TouchPad].

I assumed that this is the right one, and turns out it was! Disabling [HID-compliant mouse] that had [on SteelSeries Gaming Keyboard] as [Location] in its [Properties] would make the real driver take over and make the Function key work as intended!

tl;dr
- run Windows Update and do restarts until you have your Windows 10 completely up to date
- go to [Device Manager] then to [Mice and other pointing devices] if you have a driver called "Synaptics" you are good

- check [Properties] of the other drivers, called [HID-Device mouse], find one whose [Location] seems like it's the one on your laptop/keyboard

- disable that one (uninstalling it will do the same)

- just for good measure, restart computer again

- your touchpad and function key should work as before!

-- if you uninstalled the driver instead, it will be back :| but at least for me, it will do the same as disabling ("good" driver taking over)


works on Windows 10 Home, laptop MSI GP62M 7REX Leopard Pro

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