Pressure touch support on Wacom Fun Pen and Touch

A

AndyOv

Bit poster
Hi

I've got a WACOM Fun Pen and Touch tablet and I am having some problem to get it to work in Parallels. I am running a Windows 7 OS in Parallels.


If I install just the Wacom driver in the Windows OS and then use the Device-USB menu to capture this USB device for the Parallels guest OS (it appears as CTH-461 in the list of USB devices) then the tablet works but you cannot see the mouse pointer. I use the Pen and I can draw (in Photoshop Windows) with full pressure sensitivity support but as I can't see the mouse pointer it is unusable.


If I install the Wacom driver for the Mac OSX (Lion) in the Windows OS I can see the mouse pointer but the pressure sensitivity of the Pen is not supported. I can draw but the pressure sensitivity on the pen does not work. If I try to capture the USB device as I did above it gets into a mess and the mouse tracking keeps stalling, but again no pressure sensitivity support on the Pen.


I really want to use my Wacom tablet on my guest Windows 7 but I don't need it on the Mac host OS, so I'm happy to only install the Wacom driver in the Guest Windows OS and capture the USB device for this guest OS. This allows me to use the pressure sensitivity support on the pen however how can I fix Parallels to show the mouse pointer?

Or better yet, can a future version of Parallels support the pressure sensitivity of tablet devices.

Hope you can help!
 
I have a similar setup: Wacom Bamboo Pen (CT-460), and identical problems with both Windows and Linux guest OSs. After some investigation, my guess is that Parallels' guest-OS video emulation handles mouse motion and cursor display internally as a special case, to make things work more smoothly. (I remember a similar thing years ago in VMWare: there was a native mouse mode that was pretty sluggish and jerky, and a "silken" mode that was much better.)

It's also my guess that you could provide improved support for tablets and other pointing devices through a modified version of prl tools, but I haven't been able to find the info I need to experiment further. (If prl_tools was Open Sourced, I bet there'd be good support for a lot UI devices available pretty quickly!)
 
If you adjust your mouse pointer options, many of the problems go away. You want to turn mouse trails on, you also need to enable the tablet with a check mark in front (read more for details). I nearly always use Windows in Coherence, so I click on the red parallel lines on my upper Mac tool bar (just right of center screen) and go to enable my tablet. This will enable pressure sensitivity, but it will also disable the tablet in Mac entirely. So in Windows Mouse Properties under Windows Control Panel (different in Windows 7 -- do a search to find it if you need to) and go to Pointer Options, check enable Enhance pointer precious, under Visibility on the same tab check off Display pointer tails, just check all the boxes. If you don't like something, uncheck it. You must be sure to enable your tablet before you launch your Windows program. They you have very good pressure sensitivity.

If you need to use the Mac simultaneously, your tablet will work only with unchecking the device opposite of what I told you in the first paragraph. Do that first, then launch the Mac app and paint away. Some applications do not need to be started with the driver running such as Safari, usually they will just crash because they initialize the tablet when it starts and it gets confused. But you can't use the driver for Windows and have the Mac driver work at the same time. You also are best to use only one tablet, it leads to problems. I found that out. In Windows, more than one driver installed means that neither tablet may work optimally. Mac doesn't really care. if you need both to work at the same time, use the one tablet in Mac. To isolate one from the other, leave the one you use in Mac unplugged when Windows boots up. Once all Windows drivers are loaded, plug it in and Parallels will allow you to select which you want to use the device with, so then select Mac. Then you can use more than one tablet. It is easier for me to just check or uncheck the box in Parallels on the Mac top tool bar.
 
Getting the correct driver for Windows 7 for Bamboo Fun Table via the Bamboo Dock

I have figured out how to solve all problems with my Wacom Bamboo Tablet. I was unsuccessful in finding the correct driver for my Wacom Bamboo Fun Tablet at the Wacom website but I have the Bamboo Dock for my Mac so I decided to install that. This resolved much of the issue. When your Bamboo Dock appears in Windows 7, it is easier to determine which you are now dealing with so turn your dock off in Mac. Also if you are in Coherence, enter a regular window or full screen so you are only looking at the Windows Bamboo Dock and not possibly the Mac one. Then it will tell you you have a new driver with a magenta dot on the dock, open on the gear next to the Green plus symbol, if you don't see this, draw on the dock to open it and to to My Tablet. If you do not have the right driver, the box will tell you and there is then a magenta progress bar. Windows 7 may come back and tell you that it is incompatible. Restart anyway. When the Guest OS is restarted, again make sure you have a check mark next to your tablet. (See lower paragraph for full details on this). The other is that in order to have full function of my tablet in Windows 7, there is not a direct way as in XP of turning on Mouse Trails but I found a video on YouTube and this works.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQXksJkLjCQ

To summarize the video if you do not want to watch it, you right click on your Windows 7 desktop and click "Personalize", then on the left side of the new window, click "Change mouse pointer", then choose the Pointer Options Tab at the top, then you can under Visibility select "Display pointer trails" and move the adjustment bar to Short. Now you should have a tablet with full functionality in Windows 7. This will not affect your regular mouse.

Additionally, these procedures also need to be done: when you enter Parallels desktop any virtual machine, you have to go to Devices/USB and find your USB tablet which in my case is listed as the Model No. on the back of my tablet:CTH-661. If you have had to play around with the installation and plug the USB port from the tablet into a hub or even into your Mac keyboard if you have the wired kind like mine, it isn't going to work, plug it directly into the Mac without a hub. If you have any problem, it is then easier to figure it out.

If you have a program which cannot use the Mouse Trail enablement, then reverse what the YouTube video link tells you and enable it when you need in a Windows program which requires it.

It may seem tedious if you have to enable and disable Mouse Trails but if you want your pen tablet to behave itself properly, for now, it is the only way I know.

Now also all your gestures will work in Internet Explorer. I have not tested other browsers, but it should work also.

Hope this is helpful to whoever needs the information.
 
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The good, the bad and the ugly: The good is that the Wacom Bamboo Dock installs the correct driver for Bamboo Fun. The bad is that Windows 7 does not reload it once you exit Windows no matter what you do. The ugly is that you have to now figure something else to do instead of working when you have to uninstall the Bamboo Dock and reinstall it. I just am leaving the installer program on my desktop now as I install it daily.

To those who think this is a Parallels issue: it isn't, many Windows 7 owners are having the exact same problem I am having with no solution forthcoming either from Microsoft nor from Wacom.

It isn't the anti-virus or a messed up registry, it is just that Windows 7, like every other version of Windows wasn't fit to be released but they did it anyway.
 
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