Synaptics,UltraNav,Thinkpad Scrolling in Netbeans,IntelliJ or other Java Swing Appz

I do love my Thinkpad! And of course I do love the red bubble called track point and its way of scrolling. But sometimes scrolling doesn't work. Most often it stops working in java apps using the swing framework. This includes Netbeans IDE and IntelliJ IDEA. This morning I thought its time to fight the evil of this problem and after an endless list of bug reports and forum questions with many crazy ideas(including JNI Hooks - buäks) I found one interesting hint to a file called TP4table.dat located at C:\Program Files\Synaptics\SynTP. I tried what this guy said but nothing changed - still no scrolling in IntelliJ. A refined google query using swing and TP4table.dat leaked the evils secret. All you have to do is to add some lines to this file to make the driver send the right scrolling events to the app. In case of IntelliJ use the following:

*,*,idea.exe,*,*,*,WheelStd,1,9


It may be necessary to restart windows. If its not working try to add this line at the top of the ruleset definitions right under the comment

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
; Pass 0 rules (These rules run first)
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;


and confront your brave Windows Machine with the challenge of a reboot. If its still not working rename the idea.exe file to java.exe. (There is a predefined rule for java in the TP4table.dat file) and start IntelliJ using this exe. If scrolling is working now you made a mistake copy and pasting or forgot to reboot your machine.


Happy new year with scrolling in Swing appz!