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I have a Kensington Trackball (the original grey square 4 button model) which works great and which I absolutely love. I have had it about 10 years now and it still works perfectly fine. Kensington got a lot of grief (and rightly so) for not providing driver support when migrating it from Windows XP to Vista. That’s a whole other issue however. After some experimenting, I discovered that if I used an old Kensington Mouseworks 6.2.2 installed natively under Vista Home Premium SP2, my trackball would work perfectly.
Mouseworks 6.2.2 under Vista recognizes the Trackball as exactly what it is and provides me with all of the capabilities and button mapping and programming for the device that I could want and need. I have used it for years that way.
I would like to migrate it to my Windows 7 system now and here is where I am having the problem. If I install Mouseworks natively under Win 7 and with the Trackball attached, Mouseworks only recognizes Trackball as an ordinary mouse and provides none of the software capabilities that it did under Vista. That didn’t really surprise me however because of the changes from Vista to Win 7.
I figured that I could re-install Mouseworks in Vista compatibility mode in Win 7 and it would work once again as it did on my Vista system. When I did that however, there was no difference in the way Mouseworks operated regardless of whether it was installed natively on Win 7 or installed in Vista Compatibility mode. In other words, the Trackball under Win 7 in Vista compatibility mode doesn't work as it did under native Vista. It does function as a basic mouse in that configuration but does not give my any of the button mapping and programming options that it did under Vista. I tried using the compatibility troubleshooter function to make sure it was being installed in compatibility mode but that made no difference.
Incidentally, Kensington does not support this device in their latest level of Mouseworks, which they are ALSO getting much criticism for. My only shot at getting it to work properly seems to be to get my old MW 6.2.2 to work under Win 7.
Does anyone have any idea of what might be going on here? My first suspicion is that it is not really getting installed in compatibility mode in spite of the fact that it says that it is. Is there any way that I can verify that it is really installed and operating in Vista compatibility mode? And...if it is actually not installed in compatibility mode, why not? Finally, if it IS actually running in Vista compatibility mode, why is it not performing the same as it did under Vista? The hardware on both systems is practically identical (Dell Inspirons) so the problem seems to be clearly in the way Win 7 is treating Vista compatibility.
Any ideas or feedback would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Mouseworks 6.2.2 under Vista recognizes the Trackball as exactly what it is and provides me with all of the capabilities and button mapping and programming for the device that I could want and need. I have used it for years that way.
I would like to migrate it to my Windows 7 system now and here is where I am having the problem. If I install Mouseworks natively under Win 7 and with the Trackball attached, Mouseworks only recognizes Trackball as an ordinary mouse and provides none of the software capabilities that it did under Vista. That didn’t really surprise me however because of the changes from Vista to Win 7.
I figured that I could re-install Mouseworks in Vista compatibility mode in Win 7 and it would work once again as it did on my Vista system. When I did that however, there was no difference in the way Mouseworks operated regardless of whether it was installed natively on Win 7 or installed in Vista Compatibility mode. In other words, the Trackball under Win 7 in Vista compatibility mode doesn't work as it did under native Vista. It does function as a basic mouse in that configuration but does not give my any of the button mapping and programming options that it did under Vista. I tried using the compatibility troubleshooter function to make sure it was being installed in compatibility mode but that made no difference.
Incidentally, Kensington does not support this device in their latest level of Mouseworks, which they are ALSO getting much criticism for. My only shot at getting it to work properly seems to be to get my old MW 6.2.2 to work under Win 7.
Does anyone have any idea of what might be going on here? My first suspicion is that it is not really getting installed in compatibility mode in spite of the fact that it says that it is. Is there any way that I can verify that it is really installed and operating in Vista compatibility mode? And...if it is actually not installed in compatibility mode, why not? Finally, if it IS actually running in Vista compatibility mode, why is it not performing the same as it did under Vista? The hardware on both systems is practically identical (Dell Inspirons) so the problem seems to be clearly in the way Win 7 is treating Vista compatibility.
Any ideas or feedback would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.