figured people here would be more helpful than the issues & advice subforum but uhh if mods want to move it i guess that's fine

tl;dr 10 year old wacom bamboo tablet won't work. tried uninstalling/reinstalling a bunch of different versions of the drivers (+ tried some other things) to no avail

alright so because i am a fucking idiot i brought my intuos to my grandma's......... and forgot my pen at home but! i thought, i left my bamboo here! i can still draw!

so that's how the nightmare began basically

at first the tablet was working but pen pressure wasn't registering (tried in both sai and clip studio paint) so i uninstalled all the drivers, restarted my laptop, and reinstalled them nothing

i tried restarting all the services associated with the tablet because when i used to use this tablet to draw that's what fixed it sometimes again, nothing

things i've tried

uninstalling and reinstalling drivers (including older versions) restarting tablet services this thing i saw on reddit plugged the tablet into every usb port on my laptop sprayed the tablet and my laptop with compressed air

and anyway in doing all this i think i fucked it up WORSE because now it won't recognise the pen at all 😂 but will recognise my finger??? or rather when i put my pen against the tablet the led lights up orange which i think means it recognises the pen, but moving it doesn't have any effect

and keep in mind up until switching to an intuos last year this tablet was working well so it's not like it was some relic i found at the bottom of a cupboard or something

i mean i go home in a week so w/e even if i don't fix it i'll live but damn am i salty

Sounds like you've tried a lot already, including multiple drivers, but which drivers have you been installing and have you been restarting your laptop between driver installs?

I ask because the Bamboo and Intuos use completely different drivers/utilities and run on seperate services ("Wacom Consumer Service"/WTabletServiceCon and "Wacom Professional Service"/WTabletServicePro respectively, both can run at the same time), so if you've been trying to use the driver(s) that worked with your Intuos that's going to be an issue. If you look up the exact model on the Wacom Driver Download Page it should give you the correct one.

LED light wise, the Bamboo I have is solid orange when plugged in and changes to green when using the pen, so it's does sound like yours might be indicating a problem. If it's only orange when you're applying pressure could it be that it's been physically damaged and the pressure is reconnecting some internal components? Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a manual avaliable on the Wacom support page for the Bamboo.

I've got both an original Wacom Bamboo One (CTF-430) and an Intuos 3 (PTZ-930) running perfectly on a laptop and desktop running Windows 10 (both using the most current driver the Wacom site recommends for the models), so they're not completely unsupported yet. Unfortunately if the driver thing isn't the issue I don't have any other suggestions, bar maybe look into whether Windows Ink (if Windows 8 has that) could be messing with things? Good luck.

thanks for the response!

i did uninstall the intuos drivers before staring this whole mess because i assumed they were what causing the pen pressure issue at first :c and i've made sure i was installing the correct drivers

i've also restarted my laptop between installs

mine (exact model being CTH-461) is solid white when it's plugged it and orange when it detects a pen so the led colour is fine

but i never heard of windows ink and will look into it! c:

Sounds like you've been installing the correct driver for the model then.

In the Intuos Preferences/settings utility there's a Windows Ink checkbox, I can't remember if there Bamboo has one too (not on my PC at the moment) but if there is try disabling it. Otherwise it's going to be a setting in your Windows system settings/control panel, something like that. Don't quote me on this but it may also be called Windows Pen and Touch settings (or similar) in older Windows versions.

It's weird that it does seem to be recognising input with the LED (and a good sign it's not dead), but then not actually doing anything. Especially if it's reacting like that in all programs.

Only other things I'd check are - the mapping settings in the Wacom Preferences utility, just on the off chance something's odd there that's limiting the input area (or just reset the preferences if that's an option, but backup first of you need to).

Check that the "Wacom Consumer Service" exists, I can't offer any help to fix it if it's not, but it might let you narrow down the problem/make Googling a solution easier.

Also, if you use a separate mouse try disconnecting it to see if that makes any difference, and maybe also try disabling the laptop track pad if it's one with a hotkey for that. Just in case multiple input sources are causing it.

It's always so frustrating when things act up for seemingly no reason, hopefully you'll get it working eventually.

okay so i have no idea what happened but i restarted my laptop (something unrelate to the tablet), decided to plug it back in out of curiosity and uh

it's working perfectly now. pen pressure and all

thanks for all your help tho!!! i really appreciate it! (｡･ω･｡)ﾉ♡

and hopefully this bloody thing keeps working until i go home lmao