Sorry for the long blog post, but I need help or any form of input or feedback, even a random comment would make my day as I just want someone I can discuss this with. Just to mention that I don't really expect devs to try and fix this at all since I'm probably the only M610X/M610XA user left on earth and it's not Krita problem specifically either, my tablet driver is just very vulnerable and if something happens it doesn't like, it just goes off to cry in the corner and doesn't feel like working.

My problem is that the first time I open Krita on my Windows 7, pen pressure works fine, everything is good. If I happen to close Krita and reopen it, pen pressure stops working. It stops working in Krita, it stops working in all other painting programs. The only place where my pen pressure remains working is Genius' Pen Test Area in ioTablet configuration program and their other useless tools like PenSign. But it doesn't work as well as it does prior to this happening, because a lot of times it draws 1 px line after I've ended my stroke and I'm not even touching my tablet anymore, just keeping the pen in tablet's workspace. Here's a picture of that happening. Driver is probably falling apart at that point, getting stuck trying to process something, good error handling I guess. It does stop drawing that thin 1px line at random time intervals though.

Nothing fixes this except for a computer restart. I've tried stopping all services and programs related to tablet (Microsoft's Tablet PC Input Service used for pen movement and Genius' TabletService used for all other pen functionalities, and ioTablet program used for config) and starting them again. Made no difference whatsoever.

This (sort of) doesn't happen with other programs I've tried:

• Speedy painter, just some random free program I've found googling "painting program pen pressure". Doesn't break my pen pressure at all under any circumstances, but then again it's a fairly simple program.
• I've tried SAI and while my pen doesn't work in it at all (it just doesn't draw anything), it also doesn't work after I've closed and reopened it. So same thing, driver didn't fall apart, just not compatible with SAI. I can draw in it though if I first break my pen pressure with Krita, works fine without pen pressure.
• Photoshop CS5, kind of. Could open it and close it as many times I like when I used it the first time. But then it broke and even computer restart didn't help, it just ravaged my pen pressure even when opening it for the first time in one log on session. That happened once, didn't test further.

Clearly, my next step should be to toss both this tablet and pen into bin and just go on with my life, but I bought it in 2012 and pen pressure didn't work at all with the driver they provided on the CD. Once that was fixed with later drivers (which I only installed in 2014) my last pen started doing exactly the same thing in Photoshop CS5 it did now, so I thought it's a hardware issue and that the tip was stuck at this one pressure level. Stopped using my tablet, pen got lost/binned so coming back to digital art I got a new one this week. 2017, last driver was released in 2015, still having same issues.

I don't know what sort of input I expect from anyone, driver is clearly borked. I'll try it on Windows 10 + Krita at work on Monday and I'll see if I can test it on some Linux distro as well with non-official drivers. But I NEED to find out the root cause of this, it's bugging me. Any help and tips greatly appreciated, especially if any of total 10 ex M610X/M610XA owners see this post.

The root cause is the driver, as you surmised. The problem is that wintab drivers keep track of which applications have asked the driver for something called a "context". The driver then uses the contexts to send tablet events to the right applications. After an application is closed, the context should be removed and the driver should forget all about it.

Genius' driver apparently doesn't do this. So the next time an application is opened, Genius thinks it's already got a context, and doesn't issue a new one. Result: nothing works. If you're in for a longish read, check https://krita.org/en/item/anatomy-of-a-bug-fix/ -- it details how we figured out that the Genius developers cannot read specs like this one http://www.wacomeng.com/windows/docs/Wintab_v140.htm

boudewijn wrote:The root cause is the driver, as you surmised. The problem is that wintab drivers keep track of which applications have asked the driver for something called a "context". The driver then uses the contexts to send tablet events to the right applications. After an application is closed, the context should be removed and the driver should forget all about it.

Genius' driver apparently doesn't do this. So the next time an application is opened, Genius thinks it's already got a context, and doesn't issue a new one. Result: nothing works. If you're in for a longish read, check https://krita.org/en/item/anatomy-of-a-bug-fix/ -- it details how we figured out that the Genius developers cannot read specs like this one http://www.wacomeng.com/windows/docs/Wintab_v140.htm

Thank you very much for your reply, I couldn't have asked for a better one. I'll give that a read now, sounds interesting. And I guess Linux + unofficial drivers it is then.

And thank you for Krita, by the way. It's my favorite my favorite painting program by far. Big fan. You guys are the best.