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Great. Windows broke my tablet.
15 years ago
So let me start off by saying I am not fond of Windows' way of dealing with USB ports. If I unplug a peripheral from one port and plug it into another, it's supposed to know it's the same device. Instead, it "detects" the device and tries to find and install the plug-and-play driver all over again. Stupid, but harmless, right?
Wrong. Thanks to this "feature" I no longer have a working tablet.
A couple weeks ago I moved my workstation downstairs because it's like a million degrees right now and we don't have air conditioning. I didn't bring my tablet with me because I figured this was only temporary and, besides, there wasn't really room. But the other day I had something I needed to use it for, so I brought it down and plugged it into the front USB port out of convenience. This caused the computer to freak out and try to hunt down the driver for the thing. After thinking it had found it, the tablet still did not work. So I plugged it in where I thought it had been plugged in before, in the back. It still did not work. So I tried restarting. No change.
At this point I am freaking out because God forbid this $200 piece of hardware is straight-up busted. (I would honestly not be surprised to find out something in it had melted.) But then it occurred to me, for some reason, to log in with the account I made for when my mother needs to borrow my computer. Sure enough, it worked. But this still does not solve my problem.
I figured somehow it had installed the driver on top of the old one and broken both, so I tried rolling back to last week with System Restore. Aside from giving me a major fright by turning my account into a plain white screen until after I had logged into the other one and out again (seriously, WTF), that did not change anything. So then I tried deliberately unplugging the tablet, uninstalling the driver manually, and plugging it back in. Nothing. Finally I resorted to downloading the official driver from Wacom's website. (I'd been using the built-in one this whole time because Wacom's driver was kind of wonky last time I tried it.) That didn't help either.
So now I'm pulling my hair out trying to get this damned thing working again without having to wipe my hard drive and reinstall everything, because that would now be the third time in less than a year and I am really, REALLY sick of doing it. Plus I am of the opinion that nobody should ever have to do that. It's like having to take the engine out of your car and then put it back in because the power steering went on the fritz.
Wrong. Thanks to this "feature" I no longer have a working tablet.
A couple weeks ago I moved my workstation downstairs because it's like a million degrees right now and we don't have air conditioning. I didn't bring my tablet with me because I figured this was only temporary and, besides, there wasn't really room. But the other day I had something I needed to use it for, so I brought it down and plugged it into the front USB port out of convenience. This caused the computer to freak out and try to hunt down the driver for the thing. After thinking it had found it, the tablet still did not work. So I plugged it in where I thought it had been plugged in before, in the back. It still did not work. So I tried restarting. No change.
At this point I am freaking out because God forbid this $200 piece of hardware is straight-up busted. (I would honestly not be surprised to find out something in it had melted.) But then it occurred to me, for some reason, to log in with the account I made for when my mother needs to borrow my computer. Sure enough, it worked. But this still does not solve my problem.
I figured somehow it had installed the driver on top of the old one and broken both, so I tried rolling back to last week with System Restore. Aside from giving me a major fright by turning my account into a plain white screen until after I had logged into the other one and out again (seriously, WTF), that did not change anything. So then I tried deliberately unplugging the tablet, uninstalling the driver manually, and plugging it back in. Nothing. Finally I resorted to downloading the official driver from Wacom's website. (I'd been using the built-in one this whole time because Wacom's driver was kind of wonky last time I tried it.) That didn't help either.
So now I'm pulling my hair out trying to get this damned thing working again without having to wipe my hard drive and reinstall everything, because that would now be the third time in less than a year and I am really, REALLY sick of doing it. Plus I am of the opinion that nobody should ever have to do that. It's like having to take the engine out of your car and then put it back in because the power steering went on the fritz.
Uninstalling and reinstalling drivers has often worked for me.
BUMMER about your computer problems.
Hugs.
Windows is klunky, but there is a method to how things break. System Restore just changes too many things at once, and then your system is toast.
Most of the time hardware manufacturers don't follow Microsoft's programming guidelines. Windows was designed so you would plug in a device first, and then it would ask for a drivers disc (or use the installed driver). So, first Windows would find the device, then the driver would be started. Manufacturers want the opposite -- driver first, then device. Manufacturers want to install the driver first so they can have elevated system privileges or have extra "helper" software running in the background. This unfortunately leads to a situation where a device is "locked" to only one USB port. This is especially bad with printers. Hewlett-Packard printers are pure, undiluted evil.
When you install the Wacom driver (at least on my machine), it will ask you to plug in the tablet halfway through the driver installation. The driver will then "scan" for the tablet to find out which USB port it is using. When the tablet is discovered, the driver will assign that USB port to the tablet. If you plug in the tablet into a different USB port, the driver might not be able to scan that port, or it won't even bother at all. I've had many issues with Wacom's drivers, which is why I'm still using a driver that's over 5 years old.
What you need to do is "unlock" the USB port. To do this, follow this procedure:
1) Make sure the driver is installed and the tablet is plugged in. In other words, don't do this if you have just uninstalled the driver or done a System Restore. The driver must be active, even if it's not working.
2) On XP, go to the control panel, and go to "System". Then click the "Hardware" tab, and then "Device Manager". On Vista/Win7 I think you can just type "device manager" into the Start menu.
3) Look for any exclamation points. There should be one or more under "Human Interface Devices". Right click on each one, and select "Uninstall". Do this for each exclamation point.
4) Unplug the tablet and plug it back in. If you're still getting exclamation points, unplug the tablet, repeat the uninstall procedure, then restart the computer with the tablet unplugged. Re-install the driver, and DO NOT plug in the tablet until the driver tells you to. The Wacom driver doesn't want Windows to see the tablet -- the driver wants to find the tablet itself.
5) If you're still having trouble, we'll take it from there.
Good luck getting it fixed though, we can add this to the long list of complications windows causes