The easy way to get a 3-button T450/T450s Synaptics touchpad working on a T440p in Windows

Important: This only applies to Synaptics touchpads, not ALPS! OctoPerf’s T440p buyer’s guide includes some hints on how to tell them apart.

This is a simplified version of the instructions based on Nick Heim’s blog post which goes through the process of how the registry file below was created.

So, most of the instructions for setting up the 3-button touchpad on a T440p to get proper trackpoint buttons are unnecessarily complicated. They’ll ask you to reboot into safe mode to install an unsigned modified driver, or install an old then new driver in a specific order, and make sure you disable windows updates to avoid an update breaking things. But! There is an easier way!

1. Install the latest Synaptics driver for the T440p or the T450. It doesn’t matter where you get it from; the driver installed by Lenovo System Update automatically on the T440p will work, but I recommend manually installing the latest T450 driver from Lenovo’s support page instead.
2. Reboot to complete the installation.
3. Save the registry file contents below to a .reg file (e.g. touchpadbuttons.reg) using a text editor like notepad, and double-click it to apply the settings. You will be prompted for administrative access and confirm that you’d like to apply the settings.
4. Reboot to apply the new settings.
5. Tada! Everything works! You’re done.
6. Keep the registry file saved somewhere; if the touchpad buttons ever stop working after a driver update, you can just re-apply it and reboot to fix the settings.

The registry file contents to use are here:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\SynTP\Parameters]
"ExtraCapabilities7Add"=dword:00010000
"ExtraCapabilities7Mask"=dword:FFFFFFFF
"ProcessUnexpectedResetDuringDetection"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Synaptics\SynTP\Defaults]
"SlaveLeftButtonZoneR"=dword:00000d80
"SlaveLeftButtonZoneB"=dword:00000f40
"SlaveRightButtonZoneL"=dword:00000d81
"SlaveRightButtonZoneB"=dword:00000f40
"SlaveMiddleButtonZoneL"=dword:00000b57
"SlaveMiddleButtonZoneR"=dword:00000fa9
"SlaveMiddleButtonZoneB"=dword:0000112e

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Synaptics\SynTPEnh]
"ScrollMethod"=dword:00000005
"SynapticsScrollMethodSpeedFactor"=dword:00005000

How does this work? See Nick Heim’s blog post for details. But to summarize – the only difference between the installations for the different touchpads is the registry settings. Rather than modify the driver inf file so it chooses different registry settings, you can just manually update the registry after installation.