Vista Hacks: Making My Wacom Serial Tablet Work

March 31, 2007 by 124 Comments

As I mentioned previously, the one hardware issue I’ve had with Vista was the inability to get Vista to properly deal with my serial Wacom Intuos tablet.

After a couple e-mails and a phone call to Wacom’s support group, the solution and steps are this:

  1. Download Wacom’s latest driver from their web site.
  2. Create the following registry key if it doesn’t exist:
       [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Tablet]
      "PnPTablets"=",COM1"
  3. Plug in the tablet. If Windows prompts for a driver, hit cancel.
  4. Install the Wacom driver.  The tablet should work after the driver is installed.
  5. Reboot.  If Windows prompts to install a driver for the hardware, choose the option not to present the message again.

The tablet should work from that point forward.
[tags]wacom, intuos, vista[/tags]

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  • Rob Hill

    Thanks for this. Don’t know much about regedit but will give it a go. At least I’m pointed in the right direction now. Thanks again. -Rob

  • Bryan

    How the hell do i create a registry key? I’m afraid to mess with registry editor without knowing exactly what i’m doing.

  • http://www.anotherblogger.com Aaron B. Hockley

    If you’re not comfortable doing this on your own, give Wacom’s tech support a call.

  • Bryan

    Ok, well my roommate did it for me. But now it still doesn’t work. It might be because i’m using a serial to usb adapter.

  • Phil

    hmm, what type of key? Could you give more info on the key creation?

  • http://www.chimera-art.com Phil

    Nevermind, this worked for me, the newest 6.5 release 7+ 4.78 driver installed, + a standard registry key with the value set as above works. The new driver tablet properties recognizes the old serial tablet and you can adjust the properties and everything, great hack!! This is better than the setup I had on my xp system. Thanks a bunch!

  • Alberto

    Hi, Phil. Can you explain me a step by step driver installation? Are you installing two driver releases?
    Best regards.

  • Juergen Maintz

    You have helped me a lot. It is fabulous. I never dreamt that my old serial tablet would go back to work. It even functions with a serial to USB adapter! Many thanks!

  • DigitalSilk

    Thank you thank you!!

  • Andrew White

    I have a Wacom Penpartner (the serial version)
    Well old – do you think this would work for that too? I have purchased a Serial to USb adaptor – as my new Vista 64 machine doesn’t have a serial port!

  • http://www.anotherblogger.com Aaron B. Hockley

    Andrew, I don’t know if this works on Vista64 with an adapter. My scenario was a serial tablet, plugged into a serial port, on Vista32.

  • José Miguel

    Thanks!

    I had just purchased a serial to usb adapter for my old wacom, just to discover that wacom dont have drivers for serial tablets anymore!

    Now, with your instructions, my serial intuos works perfectly on vista 32. Just had to config the adapter to use COM1 and voila!

    Thanks again!

  • Peter Verswyvelen

    Many thanks! Finally I can use my good old Wacom tablet on Vista again.

  • Adrian Tysoe

    It only sort of works here. The config tools in the control panel won’t work with my 6×8 art pad II. The Tablet behaves like a mouse and the buttons work, but no pressure sensitivity in photoshop.

    Must be doing something because I can double tap to open folders in windows. But can’t get any tools to play nice and let me set up the tablet.

  • Adrian Tysoe

    Quick Update: I only installed Photoshop before. Was about to go back to XP and thought I might as well try painter X and pressure works fine in that.

    So it seems to be a photoshop problem more than a wacom one.

  • Hey

    I can’t get it to work. Maybe it’s because I’m running vista 64bit.
    And I’m not sure if I created the registry key correctly.

    It would be really nice if someone could help.

  • Adrian Tysoe

    Hi I put the key on my web server.

    http://www.tysoes.com/wacom/wacom.reg

    just double click on it to install it, and your serial tablet should work after a reboot.

    If you don’t trust the file, you can open the .reg file with a text editor like notepad from the right click open with menu in explorer to check that it is what it says.

    Here’s the actual contents of the file.

    Hope that helps people with the reg key.

    Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

    [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Tablet]
    “PnPTablets”=”,COM1″

  • Jan

    i have Wacom intuos serial & wista64 ,trying all(create registry key,install many drivers 6,5 – 6.10.5.
    but tablet not function ,please help
    tablet is conection in onboard serial com1.

  • Adrian Tysoe

    It might be Vista 64 which is a lot more strict about having authentic signed drivers than Vista 32.

    The only drivers that recognised my serial wacom were 4.78-6 the tablet control panel doesn’t work, but the tablet still functions ok.

  • moeFinley

    Wow! This is brilliant. Why can’t wacom sort their s**t out if it’s so simple. I’m sure they are just trying to get people to upgrade.

  • Mango-tree

    oh my gosh! it works! thank you so much! Wacom told me there was no way to do it especially as I have a usb-serial adapter , thank you!!! Ive been trying to get it to work for about a year now, had just about given up!

  • Manni

    Is there a way to make my ArtPad II work on a Windows XP x64 system? I can install the driver (4.78-6) and then the mouse moves according to the pen movement but this is of no use because the rest of the system is frozen. No screen updates. Nothing. The mainboards on/off switch is the only thing that works at this point (except for the mouse cursor movement, of course).

    Any idea?

  • VistaCrazy

    This doesn't work on vista 64. I spent three nights trying everything possible, also following suggestions in this thread: http://imbmd.blogspot.com/2008/01/getting-gd-waco…
    Even with the registry key, tablet.dat, the need for signed drivers disabled, and an install of various drivers without any errors, the mouse never moved via the tablet. I have a dream of using the mac "tablet magic" driver as a starting point to develop my own vista 64 driver, but have no time and wonder if Wacom would come after me with some legal case I was robbing them of all the people forced to buy new $200 tablets… >=I

  • Steve

    Does it make much difference that I'm trying to get this (intuos 2 serial) to work through a usb to serial adaptor? I know nothing about editing registry keys and noticed that your file, Adrian Tysoe, has gone so I was hoping for a little more help :-(

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/ahockley ahockley

      My original instructions and post were about using a serial tablet directly into a serial port on a Vista box. Others have commented that they've had success using adapters. When I worked for Wacom (many years ago… 2001), we had good luck with a Keyspan serial to USB adapter. I'm sure there are others that might work but that's the one I recall.

  • Joshua M

    Any clues on adapting this to XP x64? Having a hell of a time.

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/ahockley ahockley

      There seems to be a common thread where folks are having issues on 64 bit systems (XP and Vista).

      • Joshua M

        Found it at last! after hours and returning to a page updated recently the answer is here.
        direct quote from comment about xp 64 serial wacom tablets.
        "I got my Intuos GD-1212 to work on XP x64 by doing the following. If it works for you fine, if not I can't help you.

        First you'll need to install the 6.05-7 driver from here:

        http://www.wacom.com/productsupport/drivers.cfm?o…

        Then create the tablet.dat file by opening notepad and copy and paste the following:

        PrefsFileVersion 4
        DriverOn1Off0 1
        DriverLanguage 0
        LeftHandedMouse 0
        FunkyButtonMode 0
        NoStartWarnings 0
        HowManyTablets 1
        TabletType 0
        TabletModel 203
        CommPort COM1
        TabletOn1Off0 1
        TabletPhysicallyOn 1
        TabletFlags 0
        HowManyTransducers 0

        Save this file to your System32 folder as tablet.dat make sure it saves it as that. If it saves it as tablet.dat.doc it will not work.

        You may have to enable file extensions to see how the file is being saved by going to Windows Explorer>Tools>Folder Options>View(tab at the top) and the tenth option or so down should be "Hide extensions for known file types". Uncheck this box.

        Now if you have the file saved properly go back to:

        http://www.wacom.com/productsupport/drivers.cfm?o…

        Download driver 4.93-3 and install overwriting any newer files.

        This may work using other methods but this works for me after rebooting."
        —-Erick
        here's the page.
        http://imbmd.blogspot.com/2008/01/getting-gd-waco…

        • Daniel

          Thank you JOSH!!!! After trying a million things..doing this worked with my intuos through keyspan on XP home – I get a few random error messages when my computer boots but it seems to work regardless. Only one question, how do I find out the tablet model number, in the info you posted it is 203 – which i assume is matched to your GD-1212, i have a GD-0912..

          • Joshua M

            I didn’t created this method Eric at the link provided at the bottom of my description did. so he knows more than I. I just posted it here cus this gets way more traffic.

  • http://selfelected.blogspot.com LosManos

    hejdig.

    I have a Wacom Digitzer ii with serial port and Vista.

    Going to the link below and choosing XP I got a driver. It installed ok and after a reboot it works. I havn’t got it to work with USB (serial->USB converter) since the driver couldn’t find the USB.
    http://www.wacom-europe.com/index2.asp?pid=29

    /OF

  • rjlouder

    I have a serial tablet, just upgraded to a new computer win xp 64 bit. have been using a smaller bamboo fun tablet until I cd get my old one reinstalled. called wacom tech support yesterday and the rep told me “your serial tablet will not work on a 64 bit system because windows 64 bit systems do not have drivers for serial ports and don’t recognize them.” I have a pci 2 serial port card with drivers installed, they are recognized by the OS. device mgr sees the tablet as an “other device” with a ?. I created the reg key as above. I installed the latest wacom drivers, rebooted. the tablet did not work. I then installed the latest driver I had from 2004. now the install program tells me that it has detected another tablet driver on the system (maybe the bamboo?) and there can only be one tablet driver on the system at a time. is this true? I have tried getting rid of every kind of wacom driver that I can find but I’m still getting the same message. any suggestions? thanks.

  • Elco

    I found a work around to use my UD 1218 tablet under vista x64.
    Since Wacom isn’t supplying any 64 bit serial drivers, getting the device to work on 64 bit windows is not possible.

    So now I connected the tablet to a laptop running XP 32 bit. This laptop is running a synergy server ( http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/ )
    My vista x64 pc is a synergy client, so the laptop shares it’s mouse with the PC and I can use the tablet to control both moving the mouse off the screen to the other pc and back (you gotta love synergy :) ).

    So far it only managed to use the tablet in mouse mode, so no absolute mapping. I cannot set the tablet to control an area much larger than my screen and it looses the mouse when it goes off screen.

    • mil

      You can try Virtual tablet interface driver with GD1212 and vista 64bit. Seems to work fine. You can download the driver here. http://www.vtablet.com/

  • Vista 64 w/Adapter

    I am a little confused by the various threads and the open replies.

    So I will ask point blank. I have an Intuos 9×12 0912R model tablet. I am running Vista 64. I am using a USB adapter, since I do not have a serial port. I see some folks had success but couldn’t determine in their reply if they were using Vista 64 or 32, and if any were using the USB adapter. Please advise which thread has the solution. I intend on calling Wacom tomorrow, but don’t expect they will advise of any solution. Also, I’d like to know if it would, as a an alternative, be possible to get it to work, if I looked into a Serial Card to add to one of the tower slots.

    Thx in advance.

  • Furious George

    I have Intuos 9×12 0912R tablet on XP 32bit. This worked for me by:

    1.) adding the registry key as described above
    2.) using the EUROPEAN driver version 478-6 (the US drivers did not work for me)
    3.) letting the install program find the tablet for me.

    Looks like configuration works as well. Fantastic! Thanks.

  • Divers Hands

    I had NO luck getting Vista 64 and my serial GD 9×12 Wacom working together. I downgraded to Vista 32 and everything was fine. I am now using the Windows 7 Beta 32 bit and the Vista 32 driver works flawlessly. I’m using a serial card, as Wacom clearly discourages USB adapters on their website.
    Good luck!

  • Michelle

    Can someone please give me some advice? I would love to get my old Digitizer II (model UD-1212-R) to work on my system running 32 bit Vista, plugged directly into a serial port. I edited the registry with Adrian’s program, and have tried the 4.78-6 drivers (US and European), as well as 6.08-4 as it was recommended to me by a Wacom support tech. The 4.78-6 installed fine for me, but no cursor movement afterwards. The 6.08-4 actually recognized the model of my tablet, but keeps failing to install a driver for it (system cannot find the file specified error), so it hangs out in my device manager where it belongs, but doesn’t work. No cursor movement there either. No plug and play recognition either, which isn’t all that important to me, but I don’t know if that indicates another issue.

    Does anyone out there have a Digitizer that they’ve gotten to work? I miss mine dearly! Thanks in advance.

  • Belinda

    Thankyou for this registry key tip. I have the ArtZ II and Vista Premium. I downloaded the XP driver from Wacom’s site, went into the registry editor and created the key as specified, however (and this may help some) when I plugged the tablet in Vista recognised I put it in COM7. When you run the Wacom driver setup it also notes the COM port here. So when you create the registry key as per instructions on this blog, you can change the value from COM1 to whatever COM# you plug your tablet into.

    It didn’t work at first set as COM1, so after changing the registry key to COM7 and a reboot, the pen magically worked. Hurrah!!!

    I wish Wacom would just release a fix. I almost bought a 9×12″ yesterday to replace my 12×12″ for $580!!! When all it needs is a registry fix! Lousy…

    Thanks again for this great information!!

  • Klara

    Vista 32 Home edition on Sony Vaio notebook
    Wacom GD-1212-R

    => have to use a docking station as my notebook has no serial port

    What works for me:
    - changing registry key to COM7
    - using drivers pro611-3_int
    - and re-mapping the serial port of the docking station in the Device Manager. The docking station’s serial port maps in as COM19. COM7 was occupied by some bluetooth driver => first COM7 was disabled and then COM19 was remapped to COM7 in Advanced tap.

    Thanks to all, the original post author and Belinda in particular.

  • Will

    thanks Klara!

    The above solution worked for me. I’m using a generic USB to Serial adapter i bought off Amazon.

    I’m using a Vaio laptop and an old Intuous GD0912. It can be done!

  • Chris Friend

    the simple solution is just to use Sun VirtualBox, install WinXp in there, import your Serial-to-Usb, install 4.78 and BINGO.

  • Christian

    My Art Pad II is working properly, thanks to this gorgeous hack! :o )
    Only one question is cracking my mind:

    How would I be able, to get access to the Wacom.cpl?! All of response I’m getting is, that I should reinstall the driver, wich I did one time, with no luck either. :o (
    I wish to change the Pen-Buttons config, to my usual one, back at XP.
    Anyone had this problem, too? Any Fix for that?

    Kind regards. :O)

  • jack

    I added the registry, but now I cant find any drivers for my digitizer ii. Does anyone know where I can find the drivers? Wacom’s site dosent have the drivers because the pad is too old. Also, when i search “wacom digitizer ii driver” into google, the first result seems to be correct but it is not the correct driver.

    thanks

  • jack

    Ok, quick update to may last post.
    I think that was the right driver, but I have just missed the point of the reg fix. So my pad has a serial connector with a usb adapter. The driver setup does not recognize it for usb or serial. Was the reg fix supposed to fix that or have I missed something?
    Thanks again

    • http://www.anotherblogger.com Aaron B. Hockley

      The registry fix I originally posted was for a serial table plugged into a serial port (no USB), although from some of the comments above it appears that some folks have been able to make it work with adapters.

  • Edzo Hogusava

    Manual “registry fix” works for my Intous 1212-R (Serial) on Windows7:

    - I instal and deinstall three versions of driver (4.78 – 6.03 and 6.11) and it does not help
    - after changing registry key to “,COM1″ (no space between comma and “com”) , install driver pro611-3_int and finally I got my old Wacom working on Windows7.
    Thanks, guys, for registry key!

  • Micheal

    Hi Guy/Gals,
    I have a UD-1212-R and connected it to my machine running Vista via a serial to usb adaptor. I had given up on trying to make it function correctly, it basically functioned as a pen (a mouse). It has no eraser or pressure sensitivity. When ever I started Photoshop it would come up “please install driver”, but it would work, albeit as a pen. Naturally, without an eraser or pressure sensitivity I might as well have been using a mouse.
    By editing my registry, will this enable the eraser and pressure sensitivity?

    Mick

  • mofinley

    I’ve just got my GD-0608-R working in Windows 7. Thanks to this site and a few others. So I’ve collated this info here:

    http://timneil.co.uk/blog/?p=143

    Hope it helps someone

    • Animlab

      I have a GD-0608-R and unable to lget it work on Win7. Can you help? The link you posted was no longer exists.

    • Trevfieldz

      Was looking forward to this but your link’s not working anymore

  • Mil

    I tried Virtual tablet interface driver with GD1212 and vista 64bit and connecting directly to my serial port.
    You can download the driver here. http://www.vtablet.com/

    It seems to work as a mouse and in the control panel of the software the pressure sensitivity seems to work.

    Photoshop however refused to start. Anyone know how to get it to work with Virtual tablet interface driver?

    I’ve contacted their support at support@vtablet.com but no reply yet.

    This proves to me that it can work if someone wants to develop a 3rd party driver/hack for it to work on 64bit OS :) .

  • Nick

    Hi,

    I have a Wacom UD 1212 R with serial connector (USB adapter).
    I run Windows 7 64-bit (an update of Vista), but there is no driver available for this set-up!!!!!!!

    What am I supposed to do now? :’( Thank you very much. Shame on Wacom for turning its back to its customers.

    • Rispirgil

      Hi, same problem here except my tablet is UD-1218-R but it doesnt make any difference i guess. did you find a way after a year or so?

  • http://www.cgtroll.com cgtroll

    I’ve done all the instructions and keep getting back to the same problem. I’m running Vista Business 64-bit, using a USB-to-SERIAL adapter for my GD-0608-R but I have tried various sites and I keep getting the same problem: vista doesn’t find any Drivers for the tablet. I have tired US drivers, for USB and Universal, and European Int. versions, non of them seem to install the drivers at the right location for Windows to pick them up. After each install and reboot the system recognize the tablet asking for drivers for the GD-0608-R, so it’s finding it, just not finding any drivers. I get the option to locate the drivers manually but the Wacom Driver installation does not seem to leave any folder for the install files. Does anyone know where they are? Which Temp folder they may be in? Or another work around this problem?

  • stew

    Hi
    I am in need of the reg file mentioned above, if any one can post a link that works I would be very greatfull.
    cheers
    stewart

  • brennbaer

    Hello,
    i recently stumbled over this blog.
    Does anybody know if there is any chance to make the UD-1212-R work under Windows 7 64-bit?
    My tablet is in almost like new condition and it serves my needs more than sufficiently. So buying a new one only becoz of Windows 7 wouldn’t make much sense to me.

    thanks and cheers

  • brennbaer

    PS: i tried vtablet for Vista 64 with no luck

  • Brett

    This worked for my Wacom PenPartner ct-0405-r with a serial to USB connection on Vista 32. Sadly, no button/eraser/pressure configuration functions. But at least it is better than the mouse for freehand drawing. If anyone has an answer for the configuration problem please post.

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