SpaceExplorer Main coltrol knob stopped responding

Flashman · Post by **Flashman** » Sat Aug 15, 2009 5:56 am

Pulling my hair out here...

I'm a fairly new SpaceExplorer user (about one month) and have just migrated from PC to Mac. My SpaceExplorer has been working fine for a couple of weeks but today the main control knob has stopped functioning in CS4 (that's the only app I use it in). The buttons all still work fine, it's just the knob that won't zoom/scroll etc. No response at all in any plane.

The only incident I can think of that may have upset it is that I installed 'Spark' ( http://spark.en.softonic.com/mac ) just before I noticed the knob was no longer working so the install of Spark may have upset something.... ? I have since uninstalled Spark with no effect, I have also uninstalled and reinstalled the SpaceExplorer drivers but still no change.

Can anyone help?

TIA,
Keith

Mac Pro, OS X Leopard, SpaceExplorer USB with latest driver, Photoshop CS4.

Flashman · Post by **Flashman** » Sat Aug 15, 2009 3:19 pm

Update on my previous post:

I've been trying to fix this but unfortunately it now seems to have got worse!

Now none of the buttons work in Photoshop and the ONLY thing that works within Photoshop is the brush resize by twisting the control knob. None of the other knob functions do anything (zoom/scroll etc) and NONE of the buttons work (either with default settings or by reassigning buttons).

Incidentally, the blue LED is on and the device works with the 3D Demo and the 3DxAxis demo.

Can someone offer any help?

Keith

flomotan · Post by **flomotan** » Mon Aug 17, 2009 8:11 am

Please try to reset everything back to default by going to the 3Dconnexion Preferences in your System Preferences.

Go to the Photoshop CS4 configuration and then click of Use Defaults on each of the tabs.

Flashman · Post by **Flashman** » Mon Aug 17, 2009 9:09 am

Thanks for the reply, flomotan.

Have done that but no change I'm afraid. Also tried resetting all defaults for 'Any Application' as well as Photoshop but that didn't help either.

Flashman · Post by **Flashman** » Mon Aug 17, 2009 12:18 pm

Any other ideas? Is there a folder I could safely restore from Time Machine without messing anything else up perhaps? Anything else I could do??

flomotan · Post by **flomotan** » Tue Aug 18, 2009 9:42 am

You can try a full reset by doing the following:

1. Uninstall the driver. In Applications/Utilities you'll see 'Uninstall 3Dconnexion Driver.app'. Run that

2. Go to Applications/<Photoshop>/Plug-Ins and remove the 3Dconnexion folder if the Uninstall didn't take care of it

3. Go to ~/Library/Preferences/ and delete everything named 'com.3dconnexion.*'

4. Restart your machine

5. Reinstall the driver

Flashman · Post by **Flashman** » Tue Aug 18, 2009 10:46 am

Thanks for the suggestion.

Followed your instructions for a full reset and reinstall exactly but unfortunately there's no change... it still just does brush resize and nothing else.

I Ran the uninstaller.

I removed the 3Dconnexion folder from the Plug-Ins folder.

In Library/Preferences there was nothing named 'com.3dconnexion.*' or anything related to 3Dconnexion to remove.

Restarted and reinstalled.

No change

After the driver reinstall there is STILL nothing named 'com.3dconnexion.*' or anything else in Preferences that seems to relate to 3dconnexion... Should there be?

Is there a next step to try before a full OS reinstall?

flomotan · Post by **flomotan** » Wed Aug 19, 2009 10:32 am

The preferences files reside in your home directory's ~/Library/Preferences folder. They won't be in the system's /Library/Preferences.

Please try the process again and see if it works.

Flashman · Post by **Flashman** » Wed Aug 19, 2009 2:05 pm

UPDATE:

Yes, I was looking in the wrong Library folder, my bad... sorry!

Another reinstall, properly this time, brought back all the button functions but not the knob functions.

Following a subsequent email suggestion from flomotan, I have found that turning off the 'Application Frame' in Photoshop seems to fix the problem. A bit of a workaround but I'm perfectly happy to work with Application Frame off so the problem is effectively solved.

Many thanks to Froi for the kind help!

Cheers,
Keith