Intuos Pro L PTH-851 freezes while drawing 30s+
Hi, I'm a professional digital artist and I have been using wacom tablets all my life. I started in 2006 with intuos 3 and in 2018 I switched to a Wacom Intos Pro L because I upgraded to a bigger working monitor and I needed a bigger surface area on my tablet to have a better active surface to screen size ratio.
It all worked well until these last two years when I started to encounter freezes in Photoshop while drawing. Basically, while drawing, the cursor would just freeze and if I didn't move the cursor it would remain frozen for 10min+ so the only way to fix this on the spot, was to constantly lift the pen and get it out of the tablet's range and then bring it back, and do this repeatedly. Sometimes it would recover in 5 seconds, other times in 30 seconds or more. You can imagine this was incredibly frustrating because I couldn't get into a working flow and it would happen random, sometimes once every 5 min, other times once every 20 min. It seemed to trigger more often if I would lift my hand holding the stylus farther from the tablet.
For an entire year I have tried all kind of fixes, I tried switching cables, isolating the tablet on a single USB Hub, removing and uninstalling all other peripheral devices (mouse, keyboard, webcam) so that I rule out any conflict, I tried a million different wacom driver versions, I reinstalled my OS, recently I even switched to Windows 11, I bought a new Wacom Tablet Intuos pro L (different model), I bought a new GPU (AMD as opposed to my previous Nvidia), I got a new PC and nothing worked. I tried other programs like Krita or Paint and problem persisted so it wasn't tied to Photoshop. I tried a lot of driver/ OS/ photoshop settings without any success (including the PSUserconfig file that disables WindowsInk). I tried reproducing the freezes while running LatencyMon and the culprit seemed to be the Kernel graphics drivers which seemed to temporarily block the processing of the stylus' input:
nvlddmkm.sys
NVIDIA Windows Kernel Mode Driver, Version 581.29
Highest execution: ~310 ms
dxgkrnl.sys
DirectX Graphics Kernel
Highest execution: ~169 ms
tcpip.sys
TCP/IP Driver
Highest execution: ~2.5 ms
Wdf01000.sys
Kernel Mode Driver Framework Runtime
Highest execution: ~147 ms
So the problem seems to be directly linked to the Wacom driver for the Intuos Pro L (PHT-851) model and the only solution that I found was to replace the Wacom brand and move to a completely different brand with completely different drivers and so far, it worked. This whole experience has been a nightmare for me as I'm working professionally (in gamedev as a 2d artist) and I rely on a working tablet in order to do my job. I have had countles issues with wacom drivers in the past, like the notorious "the wacom driver is not responding" and then I would have to restart my PC to fix the issue, but at least that issue allowed me to work once I got it to function. This recent driver problem ruined my entire working experience and it's the last straw. As much as I enjoyed using wacom products in the past, I'm done with this brand because it's supposed to be a premium product with a premium price to match but with all the driver problems, I CANNOT and WILL not recommend Wacom products ever again.
If anyone is experiencing the same problem with their Intuos Pro L, consider trying a different tablet brand with other drivers. I can't get back all the time I wasting trying fixes with the wacom tablet but I'm glad that I could refund all of my purchases when searching for solutions and the only product I didn't return was the new non-wacom tablet. If anyone is wondering, I switched to Xp-Pen Deco Pro XLW Gen 2 drawing tablet because I needed a tablet with a big active surface and this one seemed ok (it's also half the price of what I paid for my wacom tablet which is a nice plus). I'm not trying to endorse this brand, I'm just saying it got rid of the wacom driver problem which has been a huge pain this past year especially. I'm sure that any other tablet brand with any other driver that isn't made by Wacom would work just as well.
I'm writing this long post hoping that someone in the same situation doesn't waste as much time as I did trying to figure out what's the problem with their tablet because it's absurd to try and fix a problem for so long that shouldn't even be there in the first place. And the good news is, nowadays you have many tablet brand alternatives. Cheers!
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Yep , having the exact same issue over here with a pth 860 ( intuos pro large touch from 2017 )
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