Synaptics trackpad configuration and the dreaded "Windows Shell Common Dll has stopped working"

Recently, I've been repurposing my wife old laptop (a dell 1520 from 2007) after I was surprised how much faster it bacame after installing an SSD.
One of the things that I wanted to configure was the synaptics touchpad to have finger gestures (specially the 3 finger back and forward for the browser). After finding a suitable driver (as the lastest Synaptics drivers don't work on windows 8.1), I had to manually update the driver to the Synaptics one, because windows would keep setting it as a generic touchpad.

So finally, I had the driver installed, and I was ready to configure it... but when I tried to access the configuration screen I got the helpful message "Windows Shell Common Dll has stopped working".

Mouse properties

Windows Shell Common Dll has stopped working

After searching for about 1 hour, I found a few posts from people who got the same error when they tried to play a video... and the Synaptics tool does try to play a video to demonstrate each feature... a smoking gun.

Since my hacking skills are non-existent, I decided to take the low cost approach of removing all the wmv files from the folder where the driver was installed (c:\Program Files\Synaptics\SynTP\ in my case). After that I was able to access the configuration window.

Synaptics configuration window

It's a pitty that Synaptics doesn't have an option to configure right clicks in the same way as MacBooks (one finger pressed + one tap). It does have a right click with a 2 tap, but I think the other gesture is easier to use.