USB Wacom problem solved.

I'm using the Intuos3 Graphics Tablet and it has worked fine until the update to 10.5.2. I have unintalled the Wacom drive, reinstalled it, again and again. Repaired permissions, nothing has resolved the problem. Wacom says they do not have a driver problem. I hope that with the bug report (Apple bug report ID 5755854) that Apple will remedy the situation soon. I rely on using this tablet daily and am at a loss of what to do next. In the meantime, I guess I will have to move it to one of my older MACs and do my illustrations on one of those.

Yes, I have tried a powered USB hub. Nada! The cable is attached to the tablet permanently, so can't try another cable. It really is frustrating. The tablet was just purchased a couple of months ago and I just got the new MacBook Pro at work which came with 10.5. It works on the new MAC until the 10.5.2 update. So now I have to use the wacom tablet on my older MAC running 10.4.11 at home and transfer drawings back and forth.

Hopefully, Wacom and Apple will come up with a solution soon! Thanks for your suggestion.

Anything yet? I've been running my intuos 3 on my macbook pro for about 3-4 months and suddenly right in the middle of using it, it stopped. I have tried all of the suggested remedies, battery out, new drivers, uninstall, reinstall, etc, and absolutely nothing. I've had more problems with a mac than any other computer. Is someone working on fixing this? Does anyone know?

I was on your wacom thread, I let off steam for several paragraphs and got the usual response of unplug, plug and un-install, reinstall crap that they pass off as advice and tell me that the problem that I have with my 21ux doesn't exist because there is no problem with wacom and 10.4. All the problems are the same as everyone else but they just quote there old chestnut... 'we're unable to recreate this problem' they must have the most stable computer ever made. But wacom believe they operate in a vacuum and just blame all other third party software. and say nothing when told the the problem exist on a virgin system with nothing but the wacom driver installed. Does anyone have any suggestions ... thinking of a usb pci card as a work around anybody know of a wacom compatable.....
Still using 10.4.11 as 10.5.2 isn't stable enough across the board....

Message was edited by: senorchips

yes, it's official. the wacom pen drops out (stops working) in 10.4.0 / 10.4.11... I'll let you know if the usb pci card 'work around' fairs any better....... all I want to do is use it... may be a non European driver might be the way?.....god knows I've tried everything else. So frustrating, I can sometimes get it to work hours/ a day, only for it to stop working, but most of the time the most I get out of it is just a few minutes... I can't rely on using it on any jobs until I sort out this problem.....

At the moment when it has from it's usual condition, the power light is on and the status light comes on when its not working.
But while this may be on 10.4 all the variations of not working on 10.5 have happened to me including the status light freezing (staying on) and if it's at one of the many long periods of not working.
I do decide to un-install, reinstall the prefs and then restart (loosing and the settings for the express keys and pens) just as wacoms (karmic chant) suggest.
I get a blank pref pane with the message that 'no tablet can be found'
I have discovered that turning off the computer then after a small period, pressing the power button stands more chance getting the tablet to be recognised (if only for a short while) than RESTARTING which seldom changes anything.
I have more than one pen so have ruled out the pens and the last remedy shows that its software as the tablet remains on though out the process.
I've also recorded the usb log using console which I offered wacom showing a moment when it stops working but they never requested it.
These Tablet drop outs happen with both 10.4.11 and 10.4.0 with no other third party software
added other than the wacom driver. But now wacom seem to have given up because it cant be fix with one of the mere handful of suggestions they dish out every time and have brought out their back up phrase 'Must be hardware' (**** I never saw that one coming) even though I've shown through this process that it is patently a software problem.
Sorry Max I do go on (which is more than I can say for my tablet) but this may ring a bell with other 10.4 users
So to sum things up "the status lights comes on when its working"....lol

May I suggest something?

Install the old drivers (I think it was 6.0.2 or something) and then upgrade the drivers to the latest (6.0.3 or whatever.)

I only say this because my Wacom just died on me tonight. I tried everything from plugging it in to different ports, repairing permissions, restarting, etc. NOTHING. So I upgraded to the latest driver (while the old ones were installed), restarted the machine and my Intuos 3 works fine now (I dunno how long this will last, it may not be permanent.)

I hope this helps others.

many thanks, I've pretty much tried everything else. maybe something that wacom don't suggest is the way forward. I'll give it a go and cross fingers......

Although it's not a logical solution. . . here goes. . . .

I'm running Leopard, and was having this problem with an intuos (first gen). I deleted the preferences and driver via the de-installer wacom utility, and then amazingly installed the cintiq 18sx driver!!!! (I don't really think it matters which contiq driver) and saints preserve us, it works!!!

Perhaps it worked for me because I'm an artist 🙂

I have an Intuos3 tablet and a Cintiq. I find myself needing to uninstall the tablet drivers from the Wacom application folder almost daily now, because my tablets sporadically become unrecognized. I can reproduce the problem when using Windows XP through Parallels (by linking the tablet to Windows rather than Mac). When I close Parallels, the tablet seems to get "lost." I can sometimes bring it back by plugging it into another USB port, or my restarting the computer, but most frequently, I have to uninstall and reinstall the tablet driver entirely. It's irritating, because I have to redo my button preferences constantly before I can work properly in Painter, Photoshop, etc. Maybe there's some way to transfer tablet preference pane settings, but I haven't found out how yet.

I just upgraded to a MacPro this week from a PC laptop, on which I had been using my Intuos3 for over a year now, and before that, Graphire.

I installed my tablet on OS X and have found that for the last two days if I restart or shut down my computer the driver becomes unrecognized. I reinstall, and it still remembers my button prefs, thankfully. Don't know what to do about this probelm... for now I have copied the Wacom install disc onto my hdrive so at least I can just boot it from there instead of putting the disc in every time.

I also have the side button on my pen to open the tablet properties (so I can change sensitivity on the fly). Again on my PC this caused no issues but on my new Mac I get a "System Preferences Closed Unexpectedly" error every time. Not a huge deal, but slightly annoying none-the-less.