Scott Hanselman

Fixing the Touch Screen in Windows 8.1 on my old HP TouchSmart with NextWindow Drivers

August 08, 2014 Comment on this post [16] Posted in Win8
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HP TouchSmartWe've got an older HP TouchSmart all in one computer that we use as the "Kitchen PC." It's basically a browsing, emails, YouTube, and recipes machine. It's lovely machine, really. I've actually seen them at Goodwill, in fact, for cheap. If you can pick one up inexpensively, I recommend it.

Mine was starting to get sick so I opened it up (a challenge, but OK if you count all the screws) and replaced the Hard Drive. It comes with a 500gig 5400RPM full size SATA drive as I recall, but that was on its last legs. I happen to have a first gen 64G Intel laptop SSD around, so I use some 3M Command double-sided tape and basically taped this tiny hard drive to the inside of the thing and reinstalled Windows. This time, however, instead of the Windows Vista that it came with, I put on Windows 8.1.

You'd think I'd be asking for trouble. In fast, it's amazing. Literally everything worked, first try, with ZERO third party drivers. Blueooth, wireless, graphics, everything. Worked and worked immediately. Nothing was banged out in Device Manager. Even the touch screen worked, but only with 1 point of touch. That meant no pinch to zoom in browsers or maps. Cool, but I wanted to see if I could fix it.

These HP TouchSmarts had touch screens made by a New Zealand company called NextWindow, except they recently went out of business. Their website includes a few drivers, but not the one I needed.

I've mirrored them here because I don't trust that their website will be around long.

Here's the actual driver I needed for the TouchScreen. It doesn't appear to be available anywhere else, so I'm mirroring it here, as-is. It's the "HID Driver" (Human Interface Device) driver for the NextWindow 1900 TouchScreen. It's version 1.4 from May 24th, 2012. It works with NextWindow 2150 and 2700 touchscreens as well and it works under Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, and now Windows 8 and 8.1!

This completely brought my HP TouchSmart new life with proper multitouch. It's paved completely with a new Windows 8.1 installation and just one third party driver and NO HP crapware.

Hope this helps you, random internet visitor.

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About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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August 08, 2014 9:25
Man you have an amazing goodwill store. We have a good one for kids stuff but nothing like the things you keep saying you see at yours.
August 08, 2014 18:01
Awesome.
August 08, 2014 19:06
Damian, I think Scott's Goodwill store is like the storage lockers on Storage Wars - a little too good to be true. They probably salt the Goodwill store for Scott so that he gives them good press. ;-)
Tim
August 08, 2014 20:10
Very sweet. Where did you finally find the driver for the 1900?
August 08, 2014 20:24
This could fix my scanner problem. I'll let you know...
August 08, 2014 20:28
Most excellent! I think my Mom has one of those machine - maybe I'll see if I can give it new life :)
August 08, 2014 23:08
Actually, Washington County has a ton of technical companies, and back in the day, had THE essential components store of the Portland area for the self-assembled PC afficionado. Target-rich environment for nerds. That might explain why Scott's local Goodwill is like five years ago Fry's.
August 08, 2014 23:16
John - Exactly right. I got two 24" Dell LCDs just last week from some tech company that went under. Only 1280x1024 but still!

JVime - I found it on the hard drive I swapped out. It was something I downloaded BEFORE NextWindow went out of business.
August 09, 2014 0:30
I wish I had a Tardis as this is exactly what I needed about a month ago, its strange as it worked fine on windows 8 but 8.1 seemed to screw it up. I spent a whole day trying to find a solution to this problem only to give up a beaten man.

Nice work!
August 12, 2014 12:50
Great work man! Really helpful for those who want to try the same thing that you did! Awesome! :)
August 16, 2014 5:45
Hey mate, I have a 40 inch nextwindow screen I would love to get working on windows 8.
Your link for the nwfilter.zip driver seems to not be working, could you please email me the driver or restore the link. Maybe even submit to driverguide might be an idea. Cheers, Sam
Sam
August 18, 2014 20:00
thank you very much for your information I now my touchsmart works very well with Windows 8.1. Now I need the driver of DTT
September 05, 2014 0:49
Hi Sam,

Here are a few mirrors, just for you. :)

http://www.mirrorupload.net/file/09ZA14OE/#!NWFilter1.4.0.0.zip

http://www.uplooad.net/file/1NXAFIDI/#!NWFilter1.4.0.0.zip

http://www.filedropper.com/nwfilter1400

http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=89161587783910866889

http://www.datafilehost.com/d/912005c7

http://www.filehosting.org/file/details/457187/NWFilter1.4.0.0.zip

Enjoy,

Will
September 05, 2014 0:51
And so you know you got the correct file:

FILE-NAME: NWFilter1.4.0.0.zip

CRC32: ED5E7DDC
MD5: 61B7A2E1C5E1801E8A066316379E25BB
SHA-1: AB968096BC3BA3A2FCEB58A17C7DE083C36C83E7
SHA-256: DA17611415DC33F18A0E7184E8CD892A306C8F80E638BB50A8D1E2B812D1A526
September 25, 2014 12:28
Thanks for the great info.

My HP Touchsmart all in one desktop was giving problem also. The windows was getting stuck at the start. Eventually I end up replacing my 500GB hard drive.

Initially I installed Windows 8.1 which seems to be working fine except the volume button on the side of the screen plus HP Touchsmart button at the front.

So I decided to run HP Touchsmart Recovery discs which I made after my purchase as per HP manual (it took 3 dvds to make recovery discs)

I have now successfully installed original HP Touchsmart softwares and windows vista using those recovery discs. The buttons are working fine now and its all back to its original settings.

Now I was thinking to Install Windows 8.1 as an upgrade to Windows Vista. Before doing that I am not sure if thats a good idea or will it give me any problems in its performance?

Anyone have any experience about this? Your suggestion or help will be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.
Farhan
November 02, 2014 6:43
Thanks!

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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.