CF-H1 (mk1.5) - Blue screen during clean install of win7

We've just received several CF-H1 toughbooks. They were closeout priced, and were licensed for Vista, downgraded to XP as the pre-installed OS.

I'm trying to install Win7pro, but having issues. Panasonic doesn't offer any win7 drivers for this model that I can find. I've downloaded some of the vista drivers, particularly the network driver since our windows 7 install is done over the network.

I actually use MDT2010 for deployment, and after injecting the panasonic network drivers in the boot and install images, the install starts off smooth. However, at some point during the install it reboots the computer, and blue screens when coming back up. The blue screen includes the following:

STOP: 0x0000007b (0x80786b58, 0xc0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)

I'm having a hard time finding many references to the CF-H1, I guess it must not be a terribly common model? Has anyone here had luck getting win7 installed on these, or perhaps has pointers on what I am missing?


(I plan to try installing from an original win7 disk, and /or running the vista recovery disk for the computer and doing an upgrade to win7, but haven't had access to a usb dvdrom the last few days. At least if I can get it installed and working that way I will be able to get some info from device manager to see what drivers are actually in use and working.)

 

If its like the 30 and the 52, you need a special bios for vista/7

 

Win 7 drivers are here:

Windows® 7 Support and Upgrade Information | TOUGHBOOK | Panasonic

These are for upgrading from Vista but, may work for a clean install.

 

I have a H1 mk1.5 with Vista. I would think that if you get it working with a Vista recovery disk and then upgrade it might be easier since you'll have all your drivers to begin with. Vista gives some tablet-pc functions that are not in Windows 7 so an upgrade would let you have all of those also.

 

Thanks everyone. This will give me something to try tomorrow.

Kingstu -- What tabletpc functions were in vista that aren't in 7?

We use a standard deployment script that installs windows 7 enterprise and injects drivers and applications as needed. It's a universal install process, one script, one base 'image', to install on every pc, regardless of make or model. If we had to use a separate image (vista upgraded to 7) for this one model, it would be a huge step backwards. I'm sure I can make it work, but have to get a clean install of win7 working to start with.

 

One more question about these -- Is the RAM not upgradeable in the H1's?

 

Nope - it is a completely sealed unit, so RAM upgrade is impossible by users (officially speaking! ).

At which point does it blue screen? Does it manage to image the unit with the base image? Or is it during the later steps of driver installation that it bsods?

 

I've got to start it over one more time and watch closely to see exactly what step of setup is having the issue. I know it gets most of the way through the windows setup routine, and during one of the reboots it gets to 'starting windows' and then the BSOD comes up. I'll try to pinpoint exactly where in the setup process it is at.

 

it could also be that your disk or image cant handle some of the drivers or it doesnt have anything to use for a basic driver how old is your image?

 

The 'image' we use is just windows 7 enterprise with a handful of apps pre-installed. It's packaged back up as a wim and re-deployed using the standard windows 7 installation routine. Until last week, I had NO drivers injected in the boot image or into the early installation, any drivers were added after the windows install. I did have to add a network driver for this panasonic and for one model of older HP laptop we have. Those drivers are injected into the boot image and the windows setup image, since it is being installed from a network share.

I was able to run the vista recovery disc yesterday and then upgrade this tablet to Win7 today. I captured some of the drivers from the upgraded tablet, and set the install to include all of them right from the early phases. I started installing win7 from our deployment server just before leaving work, so I'll know more tomorrow. It doesn't look good though, as the machine doesn't look like it joined the domain, nor is it responding to ping, so something must have gone wrong again.

If it can be done with the vista->7 upgrade process, I'm sure I'll be able to get a clean deployment working, I've just got to track down just what is causing the blue screen issue.