Dynamic Pen Feedback in Windows 7, can't turn off

Question

Okay, thank you microsoft for windows 7, it's fantastic, i love it, and intend on buying, but for now I'm having an annoying issue on the RC.

I have a wacom tablet, there was some driver issues at first but got everything hammered out, working perfectly the way i want it to except one thing. I primarily use the tablet for drawing, not handwritting, and the dynamic feedback annoys the ____ out of me. In case you don't know what i'm referring to, it's the water droplet like effects whenever your pen touches and in vista, you could easily turn it off under the pen and input devices options.

See: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-IE/windows-vista/Turn-visual-feedback-on-or-off-on-a-Tablet-PC

But what I thought would be an issue easily solved with a quick google search has now been bugging me for the last few hours. So, any ideas out there? I don't care if it's a registry hack, patch, or whatever, but you must be able to change it somehow, is there simply some options menu i was overlooking or missed?

All answers appreciated, Thanks.

Answer 1

1. Open Local Group Policy Editor: Run... gpedit.msc
2. Navigate to User Configuration - Administrative Templates - Windows Components - Tablet PC - Cursor
3. Enable the Turn off pen feedback setting.

Answer 2

1. Open Local Group Policy Editor: Run... gpedit.msc
2. Navigate to User Configuration - Administrative Templates - Windows Components - Tablet PC - Cursor
3. Enable the Turn off pen feedback setting.

Thanks, I've been waiting for this for months! With the recent Wacom driver updates as well, I now how Windows 7 + Wacom working nicely. It don't understand why it isn't like it was in Vista still, which gave you more control over what feedback you wanted to see.

Answer 3

Tablet PC doesn't show up on gpedit.ms

Answer 4

Hi Natalia. I think I've got a solution for you. I'm running Windows Home Premium with a Wacom Graphire 4 tablet. I have the latest Wacom drivers installed and I was finally able to get rid of these annoying animations thanks to a blog post by Saveen Reddy (a.k.a viziblr).

In case the blog post is inaccessible, let me recount what I did to get rid of the default Windows 7 behaviour:

Step 1 - Disabling the "Press and Hold" setting:

By default, Windows 7 allows tablet users to open the context menu (a.k.a. the right-click menu) by pressing and holding their pens. If your pen already has buttons which allow right-clicking, you might want to disable this feature as follows:

1. Open the Control Panel
2. Go to the Hardware and Sound section
3. Open the "Pen and Touch" dialog
4. Double-click the "Press and hold" item under the "Pen actions" list
5. Uncheck the "Enable press and hold for right-clicking" setting.
6. Click the OK buttons (two of them) to save the setting.

Step 2 - Disabling the splash, right-click and double-click animations:

This step requires you to edit the Windows Registry. The blog post I linked to above provides a file that you can simply double-click to accomplish this. You must then restart any tablet-related services. Try to follow the instructions in the blog post first (under "Option 2"), if you can.

If you're willing to edit the registry manually you can use the following instructions to do the same:

1. Open the Run dialog with the Windows Key + R shortcut
2. Type in "regedit" (without the quotes), press Enter and click Yes on the UAC dialog to open Registry Editor
3. Use the tree-view in the left panel of Registry Editor to navigate to the Computer > HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Software > Policies > Microsoft > TabletPC registry key. (If any of those keys don't exist, you might have to create them yourself through the Edit > New > Key menu item)
4. In the right panel, look for a DWORD value named "TurnOffPenFeedback". If the value does not exist, create it yourself with the Edit > New > DWORD Value menu item (Make sure you've selected the TabletPC registry key first!).
5. Set the TurnOffPenFeedback value to 1
6. Close Registry Editor
7. Open the Control Panel
8. Go to the System and Security section and then to the Administrative Tools section.
9. Open the Services console.
10. Scroll the services list until you find a "Tablet PC Input Service" item.
11. Right-click on that service and select Restart
12. If you see a "TabletServicePen" item, restart that as well.

You should now be rid of those animations. If not, please try repeat the instructions again and make sure you followed each step. You might have to restart your computer (Although, I didn't have to).

Hope it goes well.

I found out that you could do this what you have said or do the following to edit the registry.

open "Notepad" > paste:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\TabletPC]

"TurnOffPenFeedback"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\TabletPC]

"TurnOffPenFeedback"=dword:00000001

After pasting the above into notepad simply, go to "Save as" name it something along the lines of "disable-pen-feedback" and at the end add ".reg" so it should say "disable-pen-feedback.reg" then below the name, pick on the drop down menu of "save as type" pick "all files" and then simply hit "save" > Run the file you have made and then you may have to restart your Computer.

If you want to make a file to enable dynamic pen feedback again just > open "Notepad" > paste:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\TabletPC]

"TurnOffPenFeedback"=dword:00000000

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\TabletPC]

"TurnOffPenFeedback"=dword:00000000

After pasting the above into notepad simply, go to "Save as" name it something along the lines of "disable-pen-feedback" and at the end add ".reg" so it should say "enable-pen-feedback.reg" then below the name, pick on the drop down menu of "save as type" pick "all files" and then simply hit "save" > Run the file you have made and then you may have to restart your Computer.

Answer 5

The latest drivers have finally solved the issue.

More details here:

http://viziblr.com/news/2013/6/24/the-windows-and-wacom-tablet-nightmare-is-over.html