Friend's new Lenovo Ideapad Z710 refuses to install touchpad driver.  

Hey all, I'm brand new to the forums, but I've used the site countless times to help solve problems I've had with various computers.

I'm usually not one to directly ask for computer help, being the acclaimed "Computer Guy" in my circle of friends and family, it takes a little too long to get an answer if I need to fix something fast, but this case is a little different.

A few weeks ago my friend bought a brand new Lenovo Ideapad Z710 laptop pre-installed with Win8. I "Upgraded" to Win7 for him, as neither of us can stand the new OS. Usually I have no trouble reinstalling drivers after installing a new OS, but for some reason his touchpad driver will NOT install.

I'm using the official driver for his computer, it's apparently a synaptics driver and it says it should work completely fine with Win7, but when I try to run the installation, I get the error "Synaptics Device Not Found!"

There are a few issues that I believe are related to the driver not being installed that may tell you guys something. When he closes his laptop lid and open it again, his mouse jumps over the screen endlessly, and he cannot use the computer until he restarts. Also, he can't turn his touchpad off, which I assume is a function that comes with the driver.

Any help or input is greatly appreciated, if you need any more information please feel free to ask.

Thanks again,
-Tyler

Thanks for the suggestions, but I've tried both of these previously, and neither solved the problem.

When you "upgraded" down to Win7, does that mean you wiped things clean and installed Win7 from scratch, including all of the relevant Win7 drivers and Lenovo software from their web site?

If so, have you run Lenovo System Update to pick up anything else you might have overlooked? System Update will find missing or out of date drivers and Lenovo software apps, so if the touchpad driver software is not installed it surely should be discovered and the appropriate download/install performed.

Doesn't mean you have to accept everything which System Update offers you, but it's certainly a reliable way to see what, if anything, you're missing or that you have need of an updated version of.

When I installed Win7, I wiped literally everything from the hard drive. It was a really dumb mistake, and I don't really know why I did it. However, since I did that, I don't have anything called "Lenovo System Update", everything installed on the computer is either from Windows, or by my friend and I.

If the system update process is a program I can download, I'll definitely try it out though.

Yui Kitamura said:

When I installed Win7, I wiped literally everything from the hard drive. It was a really dumb mistake, and I don't really know why I did it.

Not surprising. I would have done the same thing, to install Win7 from scratch.

The factory Lenovo-provided software installer files may or may not have been found on your C-drive (possibly in some folders at the root level). But maybe not. And also, they would almost certainly have been for Win8, which may or may not have been usable to install working software on a Win7 system.

So don't be hard on yourself (although I probably would have taken appropriate backups of my C-drive before wiping out Win8, just for possible future use).


But I also would have pre-downloaded all of the drivers and other Win7 software for the Z710 from the aforementioned Lenovo driver site for your Z710 notebook and Win7 to a folder on a partition or drive (say an external USB drive) which would also be available for the new install, ready for use when installing Win7 from scratch.

Or, they can also be downloaded from the Lenovo driver site after-the-fact of the new Win7 install, even if you are missing the drivers for some miscellaneous hardware, assuming you at least now have Internet connectivity working.


And as was also mentioned, letting Windows Update do as much as possible is also the right idea, although very often just installing the correct drivers provided by Lenovo for the special hardware in the laptop is clearly the easiest way to get things off the ground.

Falling back to Lenovo System Update is a last resort, as it will gain access to everything available from Lenovo for your machine and will also detect out-of-date software for which a newer version is available from them.


For some reason, ThinkVantage System Update (TVSU) for the Z710 isn't shown on the Lenovo software downloads page. I had assumed it was present in the software provided for the Z710, as it is for my W530 laptop. But the software for IdeaPad machines is different from the software for ThinkPad machines, so it's possible there is no such thing as System Update for the Z710. And in fact the README for TVSU on my W530 definitely shows that it is NOT usable for IdeaPad machines.

If necessary I'd phone Lenovo for support, and ask them why not and/or how to get it, if there actually is some version of System Update for the Z710. Actually I don't know why the Synaptics touchpad driver which IS available from the Lenovo drivers page for the Z710 isn't installing for you, but that's another thing a simple phone call to Lenovo support could help you resolve.


But mysteriously it does appear that version 5.03.0008 of System Update for the Z710 (dated very recently, January 2014) is available from the DriversCollection web site (for free). I'd give that a try before phoning Lenovo, as it might be exactly the ticket. Can't explain why it's not shown on the Lenovo site for the Z710, unless the DriversCollection information about its being applicable to the Z710 is inaccurate. Can't vouch for it.

Anyway if it were me I'd simply phone Lenovo Support and see if they could help. Remember, your underlying problem regards the fact that their own provided Synaptics driver for the Z710 from their own software downloads page is (according to your report) not succeeding.

Or, I'd go ahead try the DriversCollection file from January and see if that actually works. Then let it try and get any missing software (which presumably would be at least for the touchpad).

So we installed Lenovo System Update, and it told us that it didn't have any updates compatible with the computer. So I guess that solves that mystery. I'm going to hold off on calling Lenovo support for now, due to my unmitigated hate for support lines. But if it comes to the point where nobody has any more suggestions, I'll have to resort to that.

Yui Kitamura said:

So we installed Lenovo System Update, and it told us that it didn't have any updates compatible with the computer. So I guess that solves that mystery.

You mean you downloaded that 5.03.0008 from DriversCollection and it did install and work, but just claimed there was nothing outstanding and needed for your Z710?

And yet you don't actually have Synaptics drivers installed for the touchpad? The touchpad is not working at all?

And when you try to install the supposed actual official Lenovo Synaptics driver from their driver web site for the Z710, you get the error "Synaptics Device Not Found!"?

Do you know for sure that you have a Synaptics touchpad, and not an Elan?

Have you considered that the touchpad itself is actually hardware-failing, for it to claim "Synaptics device not found"? Was the touchpad working with Win8 before you installed Win7, or did you never find out?

I'm assuming a standard external USB mouse works without an issue.


Anyway, while we here are pretty competent and experienced, given the absence of success from suggestions so far my next suggestion for you would be to ask for some ideas from the actual Lenovo user community forum for the Z710. Those are specifically other actual Z710 owners and IdeaPad users on that forum, and you might get lucky with some other actual owner having gone through your problem and resolved it.

Don't know what else to recommend. But please post back here for closure on this thread if you make any further progress, either from the Lenovo Community Z710 owner's forum or after a call to Lenovo support.

NOTE: doing a search on that Lenovo forum it does appear that you are not alone in having this problem. You should read all of the posts in THIS THREAD, as it seems to be very informative.

I'm very interested in what happens.

You mean you downloaded that 5.03.0008 from DriversCollection and it did install and work, but just claimed there was nothing outstanding and needed for your Z710?

Correct.

And yet you don't actually have Synaptics drivers installed for the touchpad? The touchpad is not working at all?

Correct.

And when you try to install the supposed actual official Lenovo Synaptics driver from their driver web site for the Z710, you get the error "Synaptics Device Not Found!"?

Correct.

Do you know for sure that you have a Synaptics touchpad, and not an Elan?

When I look up the driver by the hardware ID on the touchpad, it points to the synaptics driver, so I assume that that's the driver I need.

Have you considered that the touchpad itself is actually hardware-failing, for it to claim "Synaptics device not found"? Was the touchpad working with Win8 before you installed Win7, or did you never find out?

The touchpad and the hotkey functions worked flawlessly in Win8, so it's definitely not a hardware problem.

I'm assuming a standard external USB mouse works without an issue.

Absolutely.

I'll go make a post in that Lenovo support forum as you suggested, the thread you gave me wasn't quite the same problem, so it didn't help out in the end. Hopefully I can eventually get this fixed, and thanks for the help you've given me so far. If I find the solution, I'll definitely post it here, I hate it when people in these threads don't tell what they did to solve their problems, lol.