WACOM TABLET DRIVER NOT FOUND - What Do
So, you put your Windows computer to sleep for the night. You come back the next day all eager to wake it up and put it right to work on that thing you’ve been working on and ….
Oh no - you’ve seemed to have lost all pressure sensitivity and high resolution pen tracking! Well, you figure, why not go check the driver settings. Maybe it’s just groggy and needs a little morning reminder? You go to your Control Panel, click on Wacom Properties Configu—-
Ah.
Now, you figure, all is lost and there’s only one thing left to do: save your work, close all your programs, and do a full system restart. What a fun time this is.
But HOLD ON! There’s another way! Try this out first before pulling the plug:
Open your Start menu (or press the Windows Key) and simply type “Services”. There will be an icon at the top of your list which appears to be two small gears with the name “Services.” Click that and look what happens next:
Scroll down the list and select “Wacom Professional Tablet Service" from the list of services and click the little "Restart" link in the column to the left. Now simply wait for the service to stop and start itself back up again!
If for some reason, clicking this little “Restart” button makes matters WORSE, the failsafe approach is the manual restart. Double click the “Wacom Professional Tablet” service and a window will pop up.
Manually stop the Wacom driver by clicking the Stop button. Wait for it to shut down, then start it back up again with the Start button once it becomes visible. Once restarted, click OK!
Test your Tablet now in Photoshop. You may have your pressure sensitivity fully restored!
IF NOT, simply close and reopen Photoshop, which will be nice and quick since it (and your work) are still loaded into recent memory. Yes, this isn’t IDEAL, but it surely beats having to close EVERYTHING and restart the whole computer. Especially if you were listening to a good tune at the time.
Now, providing you’ve done it correctly, (really now, how could you not,) you should find your Wacom’s pressure and tracking sensitivity fully restored! AND you’ll have access to the Tablet Properties config app once again!
Celebrations! For discovering such a wonderful little time saver.
:: ADDENDUM ::
As pointed out by Addleton there is a permanent fix for this issue by disabling the service called “TabletServicePen” if you’re using an Intuos/Bamboo or “Tablet PC Input Service” if you’re using a Cintiq.
Disabling this will stop this issue for good — but it will disable all Windows-related tablet functions such as flicks and handwriting, and may make some software such as SAI misbehave on certain hardware. If all you use your tablet for is Photoshop and drawing, it’s probably best you disable those services.
