I'm hoping there is another 3500 owner out there with my problem. My pen seems to go dead all the time now. It used to be just a few times a week but now its for weeks on end. I haven't installed much software on here other than office and SP2. I did some testing with another pen and it too didn't work. I tested my pen on a new 3500 and it worked. Tech support says I should uninstall SP2. Any ideas?

Yes, this sounds like a driver issue that Averatec is strugling with regarding SP2. Try the driver discussed in another thread on this site. I think I pointed to it on your other post. Try it and see if it helps.

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I tried the new driver and it helped with the floating input panel stuff, but I continued to have 2 problems:

1) when calibrating, some of the crosses would be intermittently "dead." I'd have to tap repeatedly many times to get it to recognize the tap. OTHER crosses would be too alive - just bringing the pen tip near registered as a click.

2) and more annoying - in a strip along the bottom (and sometimes the right side) of the screen, bringing the pen near registers as a click. The strip is about as wide as the taskbar. So, for example, if you hover the pen over an icon in the quicklaunch part of the taskbar, it loads that program a million times. Or if you hover the pen near a scrollbar on the right side, it scrolls.

I tried both drivers with and without SP2 (i uninstalled it), and no good. I called tech support last night and they told me that since i've had the machine less than a week i should return it for a new one. (I bought it from them directly via the shipitforyou.com thing). Since shipitforyou is closed until monday, i'll keep my fingers crossed that they'll actually take it back.

I was able to get the pen to work again but only for a few minutes then it went dead. The trick I used was to start tapping at startup before the welcome screen appears. This is such a nightmare.

I too have had the same thing happen to me:
I usually restart the computer to recover the function but it may be just time for the problem to resolve. There is a battery inside the pen but mine shows a good charge on testing.....
Why would SP2 cause an intermittent pen failure?

By the way SP2 has been very helpful to me in the handwriting recognition...I use it every day in my medical practice to write patient notes for the record.

Has anyone used a second new pen in this circumstance?

I got a replacement unit, reinstalled sp2 and the new driver (which was a little hairy because it caused a blue screen of death, and when it came up, i had NO pen - i had to manually install a copy of the driver i had to get everything to work)., The new unit works fine.

Seems like some lousy burn in work done by averatec - seems to be a lot of dead-on-arrivals.

Your not the only one!!!!!! Read here:

http://www.tabletquestions.com/showthread.php?t=3567

My pen seems OK, except for the poor calibration, and the eraser not working (I know... Averatec says that the pen doesn't have an eraser. But there is clearly the hardware for the eraser on the pen).

No one has mention the battery... I am just grasping at straws, but that is an easy thing to check. The pen unscrews in the middle to change the battery.

No, it's an actual hardware problem. my replacement system worked fine with the same pen. Calibrated fine, all is good. (though windows update killed the system when it installed the new pen driver - luckily i knew how to get around it. [uninstall driver, reboot safe mode, install driver from other machine])

:drool: I am forcefully telling everyone my NEW LAPTOP is at the factory, that sucks.

Hopefully it will be returned to you quickly and in working condition.

__________________
Layne P. Heiny / Administrator for Tux Reports Network

Please do not send private messages requesting technical support. Place your request in the proper forum and hopefully someone can help you.

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