Touchpad gestures keep automatically changing to wrong settings

I am having the same problem. It is very annoying! One time it shows the desktop and the other time it opens the settings. My BIOS is updated, all my drivers are updated, I ran a system error check (F2 from boot) and it showed no errors. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling it and it still shows the same problem. This is clearly a problem with Dell Synaptics driver. I have Dell Inspiron 3542.

Is there a solution yet? Clearly a lot of people have the issue.

I got the exact same problem. Did you find any solution by now?

I have the same problem Inspiron 15-5547.  I was using driver 18.0.5.4 since I got this machine 9 months ago, it gave me gesture functions I wanted - 3 finger swipe did back and forward in browser.  Windows update on Sept 12 forced install of 19.0.15.2 which changed my gestures to ones that I do not want. So I uninstalled that one, and reinstalled 18.0.5.4, then on the next reboot, Windows Update again installed 19.0.15.2!

The driver I had was working fine, no problems.  So whose bright idea was it to force a change of the driver and gestures to ones that I do not want?  What kind of thinking is that?  If there's a security problem then fix it, but leave functionality alone.  I do not want Dell or Microsoft deciding what functionality they will change whenever. 

If this is the way Dell and MS are going to try customers property then I'll be going elsewhere.  There are other options, Linux or even the dreaded Crapple.  Anything to avoid this type of ignorant customer unfriendly activity.

Try this:

Go to the Device Manager and delete the Pad driver. Then do a reboot; Windows will reinstall the driver. t might be the same driver you had, but may now work. I don't know how or why this works, but have been successful with several drivers after upgrading to Win 10.

Thanks for the reply, but that's not the problem.  The new driver installs just fine and it works, but its the functionality that they have in that new version driver that I don't want.  I don't want the new driver, I want the old one, but no matter what I do Windows Update installs the new one over the old one and ruins the gestures I want to use every time I reboot.

You can't change the actions associated to gestures in this driver, they come with a hard coded action for each gesture and you can't change the action.  The only fix for this is for Dell/Microsoft to not install a driver with functionality that is not what the original driver had in it.  Or install a driver that lets a person pick the actions they want associated with a certain gesture.  My old Dell Vostro from 5 or 6 years ago had that ability in its touchpad driver, why this one doesn't I have no idea.  Cheaping out is all I can think of.

The whole concept of changing a users individual functionality settings is offensive and not at all customer friendly and Dell/Microsoft need to rethink this whole thing. 

You are wasting your time complaining to Dell. This is a Microsoft Windows 10 problem. Dell doesn't have anything to do with Windows or writing Synaptics. drivers. You need to address this to MS and Synaptics. Go to their sites and post there and search for others with the same problem. Windows will continue to update all you drivers unless you disallow it. Go to Advanced System Properties in System in the Control Panel and click the Hardware tab. You can now deselect updates. I don't know if this will stop the upgrading of the current incorrect driver, but it might. If not, you would need to find where the newer driver is stored or find the update and delete it. 

Thank you for that info, I turned driver updates off as you suggested and hopefully that will stop the problem.  You used to be able to do that from Windows Update and I was under the impression from everything I read that the ability to do that was gone in Win 10.  Not gone, just moved apparently.   I uninstalled the new driver and again installed the old one and I have my gestures back.  Hopefully MS will respect that setting and not force another driver install.

I have been unable to find any way to make contact with Microsoft over this issue without having to create a "Microsoft account", which I am not going to do.  They seem bound and determined to rule the world and micromanage everyone in it and I'm not playing their game.  I still cannot cut Dell out of this, the driver has their branding all over it, not MS's and not Synaptics.   I find it hard to believe Microsoft is keeping up on all driver updates and installing them, more likely they get them from the OEMs and then add them to Windows updates.  So it comes back to Dell.

Thanks again for your help, I do appreciate it.

Dell's only part of any of this is to arrange for driver updates if a driver issue arises. THEY DO NOT WRITE DRIVERS. Hardware manufacturers may issue updated drivers if they discover issues.

Dell has NOTHING to do with the operating system - period. In olden days, Microsoft did not get into driver issues. Lately, they are more and more into controlling ALL aspects of the computer operation. Because of a more complicated OS, they need to get into driver incompatibility issues. In addition, they are now getting into much more. A recent example is the development of a laptop Touchpad standard, called the Precision Touchpad.. They are pushing this concept to all pad manufacturers. Synaptics was (is?) the first pad manufacturer to get on board. synaptics provides Firmware that supports the pad, but Microsoft wrote driver within Windows 8/10. There is no conventional driver used, and Windows will not allow any conventional drivers. Microsoft is apparently trying to standardize the pad so that Windows does not need to accommodate a variety of performance differences. If fact, the Precision driver uses the same coding that Windows uses for the Touchscreen. All OEMs will eventually use the Precision pads (most are already using them in some models).

Remember, Microsoft is the elephant in the room. They are so big that they can get the OEMs and other hardware manufacturers todo their bidding. If Microsoft wants something, it will happen. The Microsoft Universe is not (yet!) like the Apple Universe, where EVERYTHING is done or controlled by Apple. 

All this new driver did was change the gestures so that it would use Windows 10 features.  These features are not something I want or need.  What I want and need was a simple way to move back and forth in a web browser to make my research easier to do.  So Microsoft is just trying again to force its world view on everyone and I say to *** with you Redmond!!

I know what Microsoft is, and I detest them for it.  If hardware OEMs were smart they would get a functional version of Linux together that actually works properly with their hardware and start selling their hardware with that O/S.  Apple seems to have done quite well with that strategy. 

I turned off driver updates as you suggested, but this morning it reinstalled the new driver again.  This is ridiculous.  There is one more setting in there that I have turned off to see if that helps, it supposedly  totally disables Windows Updates from getting driver information.  If this last thing does not work then I will be reinstalling Windows 8.1. 

That will possibly be more difficult since I had already gotten rid of the rollback files.  I did find Windows 10 acceptable until this stupidity started.  But this issue is a big one as it affects my productivity, and that along with Windows 10's lower performance and resources hog issues are just making it a non-starter.

I checked all the recovery partitions, etc., that are on this hard disk as it came from Dell and Windows disk management shows them as being empty.  Does that mean that when I installed Windows 10 it also deleted all the recovery data from the hard disk? Or is Windows Disk Management just not able to read those partitions correctly?  If they are in fact empty now does that mean I have to reinstall Windows 8.1 from scratch from a USB drive?  If so, is it going to pick up my UEFI Windows 8 product key code?  They don't put those on the computer case anymore.

Thanks again for your assistance.

It has been months since the Windows 10 update and we have not heard back from Dell about any updates. Is this issue getting fixed?

So far, I've found a temporary fix: make a new file in notepad, type the following:

(taskkill /IM SynTPEnh.exe /F && start /D "C:\Program Files\Synaptics\SynTP\" SynTPEnh.exe) || pause

and save it as a .bat file, and click that whenever the touchpad is acting up. 

That said, it would be nice to know if a fix is on the way.

Have completely the same issues as everyone else here. This solution does not work for me unfortunately. All this thing is getting really frustrating... still no solution?

There is one other thing you can do to stop driver updates for individual pieces of hardware.  There is a file "wushowhide.diagcab" that is supposed to be a "troubleshooter" for bad drivers, I used it and that lousy new driver has not been installed.  It doesn't do any troubleshooting, it just stops downloading and replaced the driver you want left alone.

Here's a link to the details on how to use it and there's a download link on there as well to download the utility.

support.microsoft.com/.../3073930

Hi,

I have the same problem and I just bought my laptop. Did you find a different fix for this?