Saturday 5 July 2014

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.
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3 comments:

  1. Unknown1 October 2015 at 22:39

    This didn't work for me i had to rename igdumdim64.dll with Unlocker in System32 folder to be able to see the settings windows finally now it works ! If it doesn't work for you install AppCrashView and check which module/file is making it crash for you .Hope this saves someone a big headache .

    ReplyDelete
  2. Unknown1 October 2015 at 22:39

    This didn't work for me i had to rename igdumdim64.dll with Unlocker in System32 folder to be able to see the settings windows finally now it works ! If it doesn't work for you install AppCrashView and check which module/file is making it crash for you .Hope this saves someone a big headache .

    ReplyDelete
  3. Oz3 August 2017 at 07:18

    Thanks for the post, it solved the issue of crashing although, now when I hit 'ClickPad Settings', it keeps flashing really fast although I believe it is still usable. I am assuming that is happening because of the missing WMV files. Good suggestion though to delete them =).

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