SynTPEnh.exe constantly restarting/respawning in Windows 10

I just upgraded to Windows 10 and I noticed that the SynTPEnh.exe process is constantly restarting/respawning

To be more precise, there are two SynTPEnh.exe processes. One of them (with pid 2972 in the below pictures) is always there.

However, every ~5 seconds a second SynTPEnh.exe process pops up (pid 16192 in the below picture) then disappears in about a second.

I know that these processes belong to the Synaptics trackpad and I have downloaded the latest driver for Windows 10 on their website (Windows 10 PS/2 and SMBus Devices v19.0.19.1) but the problem is still there.

Is anyone having the same issue and know if there's a fix for this?

Chin

Posted 2016-01-29T06:01:34.800

Reputation: 6 937

Answers

Removing the service at start is not a good idea because this service does provide functionality for synaptic touchpads. Without this service mouse pointer can behave erratically and jump over the screen.

I successfully resolved the issue. In this case I looked into event viewer and saw the error 7011. This means the service took too long to start after login and timeout occured after 30000 milliseconds. Manually starting the service did work though.

So I increased the timeout limit to 120000 milliseconds (2 Minutes) and the service could start after login (it took a while, acutually longer than 30 seconds, after the service was running).

To increase the timout limit open regedit.exe and go to key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control
Then make a new DWORD (32-Bit) and name it ServicesPipeTimeout
Change the value to decimal 120000 and reboot.

Source 1: Kepware Knowledge Base: Solution

Source 2: Stack Overflow

Martin W.

Posted 2016-01-29T06:01:34.800

Reputation: 11

I have this issue and just got to understadning and solution.

The problem is matter of two conflicting SynTPEnh.exe processes. It is essentially the same process launched twice by mistake.

One (stable) is launched from the "Run" registry key, second (restarting) is launched by a service "SynTPEnh Caller Service".

SOLUTION: remove SynTPEnh.exe from the "Run" registry key (with msconfig for example)

Roman T.

Posted 2016-01-29T06:01:34.800

Reputation: 11

1which registry key is that? – Chin – 2016-07-02T10:17:11.763

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa376977.aspx

Either HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run or HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run I suppose.

You can just use windows' "msconfig" util.

– Roman T. – 2016-07-04T06:27:34.303

I was confident I was having the same issue on my ThinkPad, but there were no Synaptics HKLM/HKCU Run registry or task scheduler entries present. The continuous restarting of a second SynTPEnh.exe instance was causing CPU spikes (therewith affecting performance and draining battery), so I decided to reinstall the driver which resolved the issue completely. Remember to get the driver directly from your manufacturer (ie Lenovo) – not Synaptics! – Xen – 2019-04-11T20:12:03.760