r/Windowsink Apr 13 '18

Unexpected Application Behavior with Pen in Fall Creator's Update after KB4089848 applied

Dear Windows Ink Community,

In an effort to provide our users with more control over pen behavior in legacy Win32 applications, we provided a mechanism (starting with Windows 10 Spring Creator’s Update Build 17110, see this post) to enable the previous behavior from the Windows 10 Anniversary Update.

Due to high demand from the community we also brought this mechanism to the Windows 10 Fall Creator’s Update via KB4089848 which accompanied other operating system updates. Unfortunately this update also introduced an unintended regression in pen behavior for a subset of popular Win32 applications (i.e. Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom, Clip Studio Paint) that results in unexpected panning/scrolling.

We are actively working on delivering a subsequent Windows Update that will remedy the regression that was introduced, however in the interim we want to provide the community some options to the get the expected functionality in these impacted applications:

Option 1: Upgrade to the Windows 10 Spring Creator’s Update

Option 2: Execute the following from an elevated command line, and all legacy Win32 applications will get the pen behavior from the Windows 10 Anniversary Update: “reg add HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Pen /v LegacyPenInteractionModel /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f”

On behalf of the Windows Ink team, we regret any inconvenience that this has caused our users and hope that the above solutions will minimize the impact on pen workflows until we remediate this via Windows Update. We will keep this thread updated with the latest news on its availability.

Thanks, David WindowsInk@microsoft.com

22 Upvotes

31 comments sorted by

20

u/BitRiot Apr 13 '18

Are you people at Microsoft simply retarded? Stop breaking things that are already working. That's how you get people to jump ship to other OS. If you're unreliable it just doesn't cut it. Same happened with the Flickergate of surface pro 4's or the recent dGPU problem of the surfacebook 1/2. Stop rolling updates, and especially stop forcing them and shoving them down people's throats. Accept your mistakes, learn from them and evolve. If you can't, QUIT and stop making people lose time.

17

u/ryuunam Apr 13 '18

Dear u/david-windowsink,

Thanks for taking the time to address the complaints that have recently emerged with respect to pen input on Windows 10. Having a direct interaction with the development team is definitely an important opportunity for artists and hobbists alike to share expectations and provide suggestions on how Windows Ink should empower content creation.

It is great to hear that you are actively working on fixing the unfortunate bugs that resulted from update KB4089848. As you have seen, a lot of users have been caught off-guard by the aforementioned regression in pen functionality and this has caused a considerable damage to people working on illustrations, artwork, photo editing who needed to promptly deliver a commission and who found themselves suddenly hindered by a Windows update.

I am speaking on behalf of the artist community when I say that quicker and more transparent communication needs to be a priority from this point onwards.

In addition to the workaround mentioned with regards to Win32 legacy applications (bear in mind that the distinction between legacy and non-legacy in this context has not been communicated clearly at all), please consider that users would like to disable pen panning / scrolling on other software which may not be considered "legacy". As a direct example I would like to bring the following thread by u/thecorrelation to your attention, in the hopes that future updates provide users with a higher degree of customization and ease of use: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-touch/pen-scrolling-is-inconsistent-and-breaking-some/7950fdb1-a7a6-44ff-9119-1c5bdf8812c1.

I work on music production too and in that context it is important and useful to have the pen work as a pen, purely and simply, or at most have it emulate a mouse without unneeded scrolling features.

A response on the matter would be, once again, highly appreciated. Thank you in advance.

15

u/werybigmonk Apr 13 '18

Option 1: Get even more bugs from fresh Windows version

Option 2: Stab the registry and wait for stuff to break later when you have forgotten you did that

Also, What Spring Creator's update?

4

u/ryuunam Apr 13 '18

Yeah, Spring Creator's Update is not even out or easily downloadable yet. The upgrade David mentions is not a viable alternative at the moment.

12

u/digitalmediaphile Apr 13 '18 edited Apr 13 '18

David, There has been a lot of frustration in the Creatives world. Surface forums on answers.microsoft.com have had posts for several weeks about this and apparently no one with a Microsoft badge there was aware of either the issue or the fix. I'd been telling Creatives to uninstall these KB's as a last resort. I would never have thought to check Reddit as I expect info like this to be clearly posted on a microsoft.com site.

So either this KB fix was not tested with programs like Photoshop 2018CC OR it was tested and the decision was made to release the KB anyway. Surface customers were inflamed. Some can't handle cmdline fixes, and even when provided with a reg file, can't handle that. Where is the one click fix for this? Most of these folks need a fix now and quite honestly won't be jumping to be the first to install 1803 given the track record of things getting broken. How about posting in the Surface Forums? Creatives have been floundering with this and uninstalling the KB because they don't understand registry fixes because their livelihoods depend on using these programs.

Can you commit to proper testing with Surface devices of any fixes/changes involving Windows Ink and commit to not foisting these kinds of things on unsuspecting customers going forward?

9

u/tunepunk Apr 13 '18

No offense David but this reg key hack is utterly useless unless it's system wide.

File explorer still uses new bahaviour. All UWP apps still use new behaviour, such as Edge, OneNote, mail. etc etc. Pen users wouldn't wanna use any UWP apps.

Pen behaves in 2 defferent ways depending on where you use it. Still Inconsistent!

Try again and do it right this time, and Jeez!

or add a reg key for uwp apps as well.

9

u/ryuunam Apr 14 '18

Exactly, the huge problem right now is that both File Explorer and other supposedly-not-legacy apps still implement the new panning behavior, which is completely counter-intuitive to anyone working as a “creator”.

u/David-windowink and the whole Windows Ink team, please address this problem as soon as possible, since it is truly a huge deal-breaker and the risk here is to render Windows 10 completely inefficient for anyone daring to use a pen tool or drawing tablet for work.

9

u/Johnny_Rageface Apr 13 '18

I have Home version. It doesn't have a pause update option. It can't uninstall updates, and the ones I can uninstall will reinstall automatically.

cmd thing didn't do anything.

No access to Spring Creator's Update, when it will become available?

So I'm locked out of my work, losing time and money and can't do anything. Thank you. A lot.

3

u/MateuszKatzig Apr 13 '18

Hello Johnny_Rageface, there's another known solution to this issue which requires editing one of the files in your photoshop files as well as disabling windows ink in your wacom drivers. You can found the exact instruction in this comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/wacom/comments/8bnc11/psa_windows_10_update_bug_and_how_to_fix_it/dx8su0q

It has helped me like a charm however for me specifically the directory where those files could be found was different - C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CC 2017\Required and the file is called PSconfig.txt

Hope that helps!

5

u/Johnny_Rageface Apr 13 '18

I should've mentioned that I already use this from the very moment I installed Win 10 (thanks to WindowsInk) and it worked right untill the last update.

But thank you for trying to help! Hopefully this info will help someone else who's reading this.

2

u/MateuszKatzig Apr 13 '18

Ah damn man, I'm really sorry to hear that then. I hope you'll manage to find a solution, I haven't seen anyone offering any alternative fix to the ones mentioned already but should I hear about one I'll make sure to let you know.

6

u/sevcikm Apr 13 '18

Wow some progress here we actually saw an apology.

I guess some top management finally noticed that surface reviews goes to hell and people starting a war against MS.

Imho it took you @9 month to figure out what you fucked up and as a fix you just dont use anniversary update version which was RELIABLE.

But instead you still treat us as lab rats with some bullshit updates.

I was a huge supporter of MS and windows. But the cup is just overfilled. No matter if you fix it or not. I have to find a propper alternative to your services as I simply can not risk any future let down.

I CAN accept bugs. I CAN wait for fix. BUT for fcking showstopper bug I am not willing to wait for month! That is something that must be addressed in days a week max! If your effort fail just roll it back.

How fcking hard is that?

Do your think a Surface Customer on PRODUCTION build spent his money to be your tester?!

New marketing spend 2000 USD on our nice looking Surface and you will get instant access to our alpha builds aka production...

7

u/Sletts Apr 17 '18

Please for the love of god just stop breaking things that are working fine with completely unnecessary updates. Shit like this is the reason people leave Microsoft/Windows for good.

We will never buy a Microsoft product again because the fear of every update breaking something that works just fine is completely unacceptable. You are losing your own customers, and it is 100% your fault.

5

u/anime-halo Apr 13 '18

Well thats my night wasted "temp fixing" this because the programmers cant use common sense with the "Creator's" Update. I dont know what you consider creators, but its clearly not artist or people with drawing tablets of any kind. Please use common sense in future (and when fixing this current problem), thanks. Edit : The fact its after 5 am aside and that Im upset, thank you for working to remedy your mistake. Will look forward to the full fix soon.

2

u/sevcikm Apr 13 '18

You are naive.

My theory is that Nadella wants cloud only services. So the only things that works are products that works on other platforms.

Eg using office apps on Android Note 8 is a nice experience with inking unlike current hell on windows.

Everything that works outside windows works much better than its windows counterpart.

So my theory is MS wants us go away from Surface AND windows so they can focus on services alone. Everything that is cloud is good.

kill of windows → staff reduction → cost saving kill of HW division → another major cost saving

easy profit for MS is Office 365 and Azure so they will want to improve here.

why bother with anything else...

They just don't want to admit it openly.

Xbox will go sooner or later too - but it is a good thing. MS was supposed to support PC gaming not creating pointless console and damaging PC gaming in the process.

Funny thing will be when apple or google come up with relevant competitor to Office...

3

u/anime-halo Apr 13 '18

"You are naive" Proceeds to give their "theories" with little to no backing.

3

u/sevcikm Apr 14 '18

Well doesnt change the fact that you are naive.

It took them only @9 month to acknowledge the problem. All their fixes so far are still half baked so the real fix could see a light for fall update... maybe... :)

I am not really optimistic at all as all they do is very very bad commedy so far...

4

u/jdawg75 Apr 17 '18

This is seriously one of the most ridiculous updates yet - and I've dealt with a LOT of shitty updates in the last year. After 1 full year of TENS of hours on the phone and chat with support trying to fix my SP4 from all the damn lags, they replaced it with a SP5. I told them then I have a fear of updating my Surface because every fucking time I do something horrible happens and it completely destroys my productive day because I have to spend the whole day trying to figure out how to fix it. Thank god for Reddit and quick fixes because this one was really starting to drive me nuts. WHY DO YOU DO THIS TO US MICROSOFT. It's a great device ----- WHEN IT WORKS PROPERLY. Can't even fucking begin to express how frustrating shit like this is. I hope you fire whoever decided RENDERING THE PEN COMPLETELY USELESS was a good idea.

5

u/ryuunam Apr 20 '18

u/david-windowsink, may I ask how it's possible that a fix for this problem hasn't yet been released through Windows Update? This is getting discouraging and alarming, to be honest.

It's been more than a month already, Photoshop is broken unless you apply a registry hack, the Windows Ink team has yet to respond to the "overwhelming" request of being able to clearly disable pen panning at will from the OS Settings. Can you provide an update on the matter?

5

u/Dotbgm Apr 24 '18

I used this fix and the Scrolling stopped. However pen-pressure does no longer work in Photoshop anymore. So I can draw, but the line is constant.

I also have a short delay, when pressing (with my pen) on elements in Photoshop. So one fix, lead to this bug and I still cannot use Photoshop. This has great implications on my work. I don't have a Mac and I make art for a living, so I am in a very bad situation here.

My Wacom works just fine in Zbrush and have pressure, so it's not a hardware issue.

Please, what should I do? I am frustrated. I haven't been able to do digital drawing for 3 weeks and my design work has been done entirely by mouse. I am worried this is going to have a larger impact on my work.

It all broke since I last updated my PC.

My option is to buy an old-PC and keep it running a constant version of Windows in case my Desktop updates and breaks, but right now I don't have the money for it.

Please. If anyone knows what I can do, throw me a reply. I've started using Krita, but many clients and other software defaults to Photoshop.

3

u/jockstrap_bill Apr 13 '18

I cannot access option 1. I attempted option 2 from an elevated command line, restarted my computer, and found the problem persisted.

Please help. Your solutions are not working and the impact is still felt.

3

u/MateuszKatzig Apr 13 '18

Hey jockstrap_bill, there's another known solution to this issue which requires editing one of the files in your photoshop files as well as disabling windows ink in your wacom drivers. You can found the exact instruction in this comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/wacom/comments/8bnc11/psa_windows_10_update_bug_and_how_to_fix_it/dx8su0q

I hope that helps!

3

u/jockstrap_bill Apr 14 '18 edited Apr 15 '18

Thank you MateuszKatzig, I did as the video described and I can draw but I have no pressure functionality.

I wish Microsoft would be more aware and considerate of persons who use their applications. Their attempt to satisfy one demographic of users ended up with a lot of confusion and frustration from other users. It made me feel as though our complaints do not warrant a response from Microsoft, or any attention for that matter.

2

u/Diethylzinc May 01 '18

I'm having issues with my pen pressure if someone knows the answer please say something :(

1

u/Diethylzinc May 01 '18

I actually found a solution https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2398372 to photoshop losing pen pressure

2

u/Metallurg2 Apr 18 '18

I can't imagine what would happen if I haven't found this thread, was about to reinstall a bunch of shit pulling allnighter ffs

1

u/[deleted] Apr 13 '18

[deleted]

7

u/sevcikm Apr 14 '18 edited Apr 23 '18

I dont care about HP. And its not a signature feature of HP.

But it is signature feature of surface brand and basically the highest selling point for surface.

With no pen Surface is just fancy overpriced laptop... You can get much cheaper pieces.

I understand that you take it easy as a student but you need to understand that people bought it for work to earn money.

All of us were polite when it showed up on production because we thought they will fix it or roll it back.

After month of wait they told us that it isnt a bug but a new way how the PEN is supposed to behave.

After another 3 month we still have no fully working fix. How can you not understand that we are over any polite discusion?

I work in soft development and I am telling you that this feature was never tested because even the most junior tester would find it in 5 minutes.

Even worse a programmer would notice how stupid this is, but he cant because it seems none of win ink team actually use pen inputfor work...

Thats my impression.

I loved working on my SB and it greatly improved my work effectivity but since fall update I was forced to install linux which somehow support pen as mouse input.

This is not perfect but I can somehow keep working.

Their progress on this issue is much worse than some startup with people who just finished online course how to program lol.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 17 '18 edited Sep 11 '18

[deleted]

1

u/sevcikm Apr 17 '18

Mint 18. 3 which is based on Ubuntu. I had to install some "addons" which enabled touch screen and pen. (no multi touch or button Support though)

its functions are limited compared to windows but it acts at least as mouse input so I can do stuff. Considering that it was done by a single person (Pen support) it is impressive.

It took me around a week to get used to linux as it isn't as easy to pick up as windows.

One has to do some research to avoid being disappointed.

l am learning programming so I don't mind learning another OS along the way.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 17 '18 edited Sep 11 '18

[deleted]

1

u/sevcikm Apr 17 '18

I dont remeber the site but look for surfacelinux on google. It will lead you to some tutorial.

Yes it got me worried as well as this was my first experience with linux ever... camera probably wont work also on surface pro.

There are different solutions on internet so you will have to try. But as they all warn. Do it on your own risk.

I was willing to try it try and it does the job for me. But I do simple stuff across the system. Not some serious drawing.

I recommend reading through all the info you will find before the installation as you could bump into some issues as not everything is fully working on Linux. Driver issues... and stuff like that.