Installer issues for USB Spaceball 5000 on driver 3-5-6

[Phill B]

I have just been forced to update my drivers by virtue of installing SolidWorks 2008 and have hit an apparently insurmountable problem. Part way through the driver install the software tells me that the Spaceball software is still running and must be shut down in order to complete the install, but this is not the case. I have tried restarts, safe starts, windows clean-up utilities, deleting the program folders, everything short of a reg edit. Has anyone got any experience of this, and more importantly any way to fix it? The 3D Connexion support were stumped so you are my only hope!

[rstadie]

Hi Phill B,

that sounds really strange. Check the Task-manager: Do you see anything related to 3Dx running?

Please also have a look here - and make sure you are logged on with administrative privileges.

[Phill B]

The full registry wipe seems to have done the trick, as the driver has successfully loaded. Have the speed scales been changed because now, even on maximum overall speed in SolidWorks, the response is slower than it used to be?

[rstadie]

Are you able to adjust the speed through our control-panel to your needs?
That should work...

[Phill B]

I can adjust the speed but even with it maxed out it is nowhere near as fast as it once was. It used to be that if you moved the overall speed adjuster up to max the speed of motion was so fast it was uncontrollable, now it is a little less than I would have normally had it set to (which was just past halfway before. Interestingly I have a colleague who uses the newer type of device and that behaves normally so I think the problem is specific to the Spaceball 5000, or possibly my installation of the software given the other problems...

[rstadie]

Have you tried to adjust the speed under the "Advanced Settings" tab also?

[Phill B]

Yes, it doesn't seem to change it very much

[rstadie]

I just tested the SpaceBall 5000 USB with SolidWorks 2008. When I changed the "Nonlinear Factor" under HKCU/Software/3Dconnexion/3DxWare in the registry, I could not see a difference. The default-value is 1.7

Do you notice a difference when you increase this factor?

[Phill B]

No it doesn'y have an effect, although I have now rechecked increasing all of the advanced speed ratings to maximum and it has sped up appreciably. I don't know whether this is due to something done recently but I could have sowrn it didn't work before. either way I can set it now

[jwick]

A recent release did decrease the default overall scale factors used by all applications. You can adjust them back to the original settings by using the sliders. Your saved configurations will not have been affected.