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I have a Lenovo notebook (Win 8) with a touchpad that's manufactured by Elan (aka Elantech).

I've previously used a Synaptics touchpad on my old notebook and have gotten accustomed to its features like Momentum which allows you to control mouse movement by flicking your finger across the touchpad surface.

I read on a forum somewhere that Elan and Synaptics use similar hardware but I couldn't get Synaptics drivers to work with the hardware (generic Synaptics drivers also didn't work) and I wasn't sure that modifying Synaptics' driver configuration file (INF driver file) to add an entry for Elan touchpad's hardware ID would be safe.

From another forum I found out about this registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Elantech\SmartPad

Changes to DWORDs within this key would enable or disable several features of the touchpad that were otherwise not customizable from the ELAN driver configuration utility under Mouse Properties in the Control Panel.

I was able to enable several features that are found in Synaptics devices by editing DWORD values in the Registry but I could not get Momentum to work. Some "Momentum" related DWORDs I found were Momentum_Display, Momentum_Bounce_Enable, Momentum_Enable and Momentum_Slider but changing their values doesn't seem to do anything.

If your notebook has an Elantech touchpad and you got Momentum working, please help.

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  • What's the use of using the momentum feature.My synaptics touchpad has is and I think it is crazy feature which is useless.
    – Suici Doga
    Mar 22, 2016 at 6:44
  • @SuiciDoga Momentum (on Windows systems) allows you to make long mouse movements with short flicks of your finger. I guess you could think of it as reduced friction for mouse movements that makes the mouse pointer glide across the screen as you flick your finger over the touchpad. I find it highly desirable and it's made me not hate my notebook's touchpad but not everyone may feel the same way, of course.
    – Vinayak
    Mar 22, 2016 at 7:13

2 Answers 2

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NOTE: This answer is outdated. You don't need to modify the driver configuration file to enable Momentum anymore. You can simply change the relevant DWORD values at the following registry keys to enable/disable Momentum and a host of other features.

To enable Momentum, set Momentum_Enable and Momentum_Display to 1. You can find them in the registry keys listed below.

For Windows 10:

  1. Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Elantech\SmartPadDisplay

  2. Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Elantech\SmartPad

After doing this, Momentum or 'Inertia' related settings will start showing up in the 'Elan Smart-Pad' application that lets you configure various features of the touchpad.


I finally figured out how to enable Momentum (called Inertia in Elantech touchpads) as well as a host of other hidden features in ELAN manufactured touchpads.

Thanks to this blog post, I found out that the way to do this was to edit Elantech drivers (ETD.inf). If you're using WHQL inbox drivers, you'll probably have to downgrade to older Elantech drivers for this to work.

Make sure that the touchpad drivers you have include a setup.exe file so you can install the drivers. You'll also have to run Windows in Test Mode with integrity checks disabled so you can install the modded drivers. To restart Windows in Test Mode, run the command prompt as administrator and enter the following commands:

bcdedit -set loadoptions DISABLE_INTEGRITY_CHECKS
bcdedit -set TESTSIGNING ON

Uninstall the previous touchpad drivers and make sure you check the Delete the driver software for this device box
driver delete

Now open ETD.inf in the Elantech drivers folder with a decent text editor (I recommend Notepad++) and change all instances of

Momentum_Display,%REG_DWORD%,0

to

Momentum_Display,%REG_DWORD%,1

Also change the first instance of (you'll find this in the [ETD_SmartPadUI_Default.AddReg] section)

Momentum_Enable,%REG_DWORD%,0

to

Momentum_Enable,%REG_DWORD%,1

If you'd like the cursor to bounce off of screen edges, then change:

Momentum_Bounce_Enable,%REG_DWORD%,0

to

Momentum_Bounce_Enable,%REG_DWORD%,1

There are lots of other options you can enable/disble as well. However, I'll leave it to you to experiment with them. You'll find the most interesting settings in the following sections:

[ETD_SmartPadDisplay_Default.AddReg]
[ETD_SmartPadDisplay_Win8.AddReg]
[ETD_SmartPadUI_Default.AddReg]

WARNING: Make sure you know exactly what you're doing here or you could end up with an unstable driver and lots of BSODs. I recommend making a backup of the original drivers before you start to modify them.

After you've finished editing the drivers, reboot your computer and install the new modded drivers by running setup.exe

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  • I'm actually trying to disable the momentum functionality, but all of my values are already zero. Apr 2, 2015 at 22:41
  • @JamieKitson You should be able to disable Momentum from the Elan configuration tool that you'll see in Mouse Properties (Win+R -> control /name Microsoft.Mouse). The feature is called Inertia on my system.
    – Vinayak
    Apr 3, 2015 at 7:43
  • That's what I expected, but I don't seem to have any Elan configuration tools. I can't see anything extra in Mouse Properties. Note that I am using Win 10 though. Apr 4, 2015 at 21:05
  • @JamieKitson You don't see something like this?
    – Vinayak
    Apr 7, 2015 at 6:35
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    @JamieKitson you should probably ask this as a separate question. Also, if the driver is installed, you may find ETDAniConf.exe somewhere under Program Files in the Elantech folder. That is the graphical configuration manager on my system.
    – Vinayak
    Apr 8, 2015 at 14:16
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Thanks to the guidance on this forum I was able to enable momentum/inertia on my HP Pavilion X2. It is actually very easy to do (no need to re-install drivers).

  1. Windows+R and type in Regedit, hit enter. This opens registry
  2. Hit control-f to pull up the search box. Uncheck all options except Values
  3. Paste Momentum_Display in the search box and click FIND NEXT
  4. It may take a minute to return result, but once found, Double click on the value and (I) Change Base to Decimal (II) Set Value Data to 1
  5. Repeat the search until all instances of Momentum_Display have been changed (there can be more than one).
  6. Repeat steps 2 to 5 for the following values
    • Momentum_Enable
    • Momentum_Bounce_Enable
  7. Press WIN+X>Shut Down or Sign-out>Sign Out.
    • Sign-Out
  8. Sign-in again, and move mouse...it should now glide momentously across the screen.
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  • 1
    The search feature on the registry is broken, and did not find the multiple entries of the Momentum settings. This resulted in the fix not being applied, and being reverted every time I signed out of windows. To fix this issue, you will need to look in SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Elantech\SmartPad and SmartPadDisplay for the extra set of values. Once you set these to 1 and sign out / lock windows, you will get momentum working.
    – Dmac
    Nov 18, 2016 at 14:13
  • You can backup the registry values by exporting to your desktop or wherever, and if they get reset, which was my case, you can double click the registry backup file to re-enable them. Warning, this may overwrite other newly added or changed entries, so do this at your own risk.
    – Dmac
    Nov 18, 2016 at 14:13

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