Windows 7 - Wacom Tablet, ring round pen cursor

I use an Intuos Wacom Tablet in Photoshop CS4 x64, and I've been driven crazy by an animated ring that appears when I touch the pen tip to a menu or slider. It made my movements much less precise. E.g. when I tried to drag a slider a short distance (say, 100% opacity to 95%), the pen wouldn't grab the slider at first; and then it would make much too big an adjustment (100% to 50%...).

I've now tracked down the solution, posted on the EU Wacom forum 2 days ago:Wacom Forum - Wacom Europe GmbH | View topic - small annoying things on vista...

Here's what it says:

"Vista has the 'pen inking' from XP TabletPC edition integrated, allowing gesture and handwriting recognition. You can control the settings in a special control panel for this, called 'TabletPC Input' panel. [Pen and Touch, Windows 7.]
*Disable 'Press and Hold' to remove that circle.*

"You could also disable the service 'TabletPC Input Service' or go to device manager, select Human Interface Devices' and disable WacomVirtualHID.*

"Then Vista does not see a pen devices and will not activate those features. The tablet will still work fine on desktop and in usual pressure sensitive applications."

I had already disabled the tablet PC in Services, but apparently that wasn't enough. I disabled Press & Hold, and the ring has vanished.

This is probably well known to Wacom/Photoshop users who migrated to Windows 7 from Vista, but I migrated from XPPro, and the info was tolerably hard to find online, so I'm posting it here in case anyone finds it useful.

Mary

Thanks for the info! I have an old Wacom 12x12 tablet and am thinking of using it with Windows 7...

It's not a problem it's an option to duplicate right clicking by "click and hold".

Any idea on how to get rid of the splash mark on pen taps?

Yeah, there's a setting somewhere in the touch panel. I'm not on my touch computer right now, but I'll check later.

Fantastic. Can't wait to hear back.

Anyone find out how to remove the splash animation yet? ive disabled all my mouse options and its still there when i use my pen. drivin my nuts.

it should be in your tablet pc options (you must install your touch/Pen drivers first to have this ability if recall)

i had it installed but it completly messed up my configuration so now im awaiting for either wacom or HP to fix this...

It's not a wacom issue. This same splashing graphic occurs for my Adesso tablet. It is a windows feature (setting? maybe, seems permanent to me). I can get it to disappear if I uninstall the tablet functionality.
as in --> Control panel--->Add remove programs --> Windows Components/ Turn windows features on and off---> Tablet PC components.

I consider this akin to killing the patient as it disables all windows tablet functionality such as inking in word/excel and the tablet input panel. I have yet to find a setting to turn this damn thing off.

The ring and the splash will disappear if you change your tablet settings from "pen" to "mouse" mode after you install the wacom drivers.

My touch screen had a mouse/touch setting as well. Once I switched the "droplet" disappeared.

On my Wacom tablet, both disappeared because my pen has "buttons" on it to replicate the double click/right click.

So Install the drivers ->control panle -> Pen & Tablet Properties -> Tracking mode to Mouse instead of pen.