I’m a long-time ThinkPad fan and owner—the keyboards are sublime, and I love the TrackPoint interface. What I don’t love is the ThinkPad driver software, which doesn’t send the standard WM_MOUSEWHEEL messages to the system. That bug means that many .NET controls don’t scroll properly. Over the years, I’ve fixed many of the controls in Fiddler to workaround the problem, but not all of them. For instance, ThinkPad users will notice that when they try to middle-click-scroll the HexView controls, they get the scroll-cursor, but no scrolling as they move the cursor:
Over on his blog, Mark Rideout explains the root cause of Lenovo’s scrolling problem and explains how .NET developers can workaround the bug by adding hidden scrollbar controls to trick the driver software. I’ll be looking at using this trick in a future version of Fiddler. For now, a cumbersome but effective configuration tweak to the Lenovo driver settings allows end-users to get scrolling working properly in Fiddler and most other applications.
Start Notepad using the Run As Administrator option. Open the file C:\program files\lenovo\trackpoint\tp4table.dat (note that the tp4table.dat file may be in another path on your computer). Add the lines in blue under the existing lines in grey.
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
; Pass 1 rules (These rules run last)
;
; If no scrolling method was found with the builtin logic, then
; these rules are checked.
;
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
; Fiddler
*,*,Fiddler.exe,*,*,*,WheelStd,1,9
Restart your system to force the driver software to reload its settings, and you should find that middle-click-scrolling works properly in Fiddler.
Until next time…
-Eric