I think it's time for a CF-52...

I didn't mean to be short answering...
Normally I would have researched the resolution for you..
I'm having a VERY stressful day.......

 

No apology necessary, Shawn. I have a brutally sarcastic core group of friends (aholes). Your reply was far more kind than what I usually get

Be well, this too shall pass.

 

You a friend of Bill and Bob?

 

W7 is loaded on the MKI. I see some flags in device mager for serial port and a couple unknown. Any input on this before I just hunt and peck?

Edit - it looks like the FN keys are working, but no little pop up. Not sure I care though. But getting those keys to work was one of the hardest parts of putting W7 on the CF-51

 

try this neat little program

http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/unknown_devices.html

 

Working on it. Unfortunately it looks like the MK1 is a bit like the CF-51 with no true support for W7. I'll have to dig through my notes and reference my old thread on this forum about putting W7 on the CF-51. I think I found that the XP drivers worked the best. The load on the MKII will be straight forward.

 

dig thru these results

https://www.google.com/search?num=20&safe=off&pws=0&q=cf52 mk1 windows 7 site:forum.notebookreview.com/panasonic&oq=cf52 mk1 windows 7 site:forum.notebookreview.com/panasonic&gs_l=serp.3...19516.21348.0.22989.5.5.0.0.0.0.155.659.0j5.5.0.msedr...0...1c.1.62.serp..5.0.0.NpfLxBN8KAc

this may be a better search

https://www.google.com/search?num=2...win+7+site:forum.notebookreview.com/panasonic

 

Will do - thanks. Gotta go help with family for a bit but I'll dig into this later tonight. What I did before was just keep playing with drivers until I got the combination that worked. Wrote that combination down and then loaded W7 again from scratch so I could load only the drivers I found I needed.

 

Now I recall..Install Vista with the recovery disk...
Then upgrade to Win 7..Everything should work fine....

 

Ugh. Really not a fan of the upgrade scenario but you're right, that would work. I'm sitting down now to put some time into it. I know I went through some crazy stuff before. It seems to me I put it on the CF-50 too but that may not be right. I do remember going to crazy lengths, downloading chipset drivers directly from intel and all kinds of stuff. But I got it to work 100%

 

The upgrade path will still be faster than poke and hope to find the driver path.
I know from experience..
The Panasonic restore takes only 15 minutes...

Once Win7 is up and running, do a full backup recovery set..I use Acronis...
Then you will have a Win7 restore dvd for a CF52 mk1....

 

But that's no fun.........

I just ran across a thread from a few years ago with some scary s__t about SSD drives, installing drivers, trim adjustments, enabling AHCI....

Is all that still relevant with modern drives? Cause I didn't do ANYTHING like that so far.

 

Win 7 does trim on it's own with all newer drives...

Here's a great link..

http://www.thessdreview.com/ssd-guides/beginners-guide/

 

you can also download a driver bundle for Windows 7 at Panasonic,install 7 and click on the exe and it installs all the drivers at once.

 

I could not find a bundle for CF52 mk1

 

Yea as soon as you say MK1 the only options are Vista or XP. I did have some luck before with more options on the Japanese Toughbook site.

 

Sometimes I really really hate Microsoft. I'm at it for a couple hours now with the Vista upgrade scenario. Mostly because I've forgotten how to do some of this stuff but partly because MS is a complete joke.

 

I see that,I mentioned to try the old trick of restore in a Mk2 then put drive in Mk1 and see if it works.I've done it on CF-30's so why not?

I do the upgrade thing all the time fixing laptops for people here,most of the folks here have Vista on their laptops to start with sooooo,patience is a virtue. That and Newcastle Brown Ale and good cigars.

 

I'm still at it.....

I had already started the Vista plan when you mentioned the MK2 option so I figured I'd just follow it through. But W7 won't upgrade Vista until you've got it on the latest service pack.... and of course you can't download the latest service packs with the default IE on in Vista, or even the updated version of IE from the old version of IE. REALLY Microsoft???? REALLY????

It's in now. No errors in device manager. The only thing is I had to uninstall the video driver and now it's using a default Windows driver. I'm sure it's the same driver that loaded when I did the W7 load a this afternoon, but the internal benchmarks are now lower. No big deal. I'm downloading the ATI catalyst drivers now. But other than video, I'd say it's done.

Getting my kids up for school is going to be hell.

 

Glad you got it going...

 

Yea it's going. It won't take any of the video drivers though, just the W7 default. So no Catalyst or any of that. I think that's all fine. Otherwise it's installed and fully updated. I'll make an image of it tonight and start loading software.

Looking at the MK2 is it correct that the WiFi card is under that sort of triangular shaped plate on the bottom? Looks like I need a security Torx to get it off.

 

Catalyst is bloatware anyway. Yep wifi is under that plate.. Throw that torx screw away.

 

I had to do one the other day,Vista home 64bit. So I can't just upgrade with the 7 pro 32 bit I have as its not compatable. Had to find Windows 7 home 64 to do it,what a pita and 64 bit is useless on this dog of a laptop.

 

Round Two anyone! I made an image of the MK1 and then pulled it apart for the caddy so I could get started on the MK2. Just felt like getting both OS done before starting on the software and documents slog, but I won't have the 2nd caddy until Saturday.

 

And we are off to a brilliant start! Motherboard looks to have an issue. Battery is not charging

 

try this to start.

 

Then wiggle the power adapter plug, where it goes into the CF52. ....The jacks go bad...

 

Sadly no love. Using the battery and supply from the MK1. It's definitely getting a good connection and powering up the laptop just fine and it will also run from the battery just fine. Just no charging. I remember an old buddy of mine having to put a charging module in one of his Toughbooks but I don't remember any of the details. Not too much more I can do with it tonight. Technically it's still usable, but not really.

Edit - looks like the MK2 has a 14 day return policy with me paying for return shipping. Not a smooth process, but hopefully in the end we'll get it all going.

 

Nope,if it doesn't work do not pay for shipping back,insist that he sends you a return label.Told ya you should have got that one from me...lol.

That 14 day means nothing on a defective item,ebay gives you 30 days and paypal 45,I do this for a living so don't let him try to BS you.

 

Just mention politely"file a claim with ebay" and see if he offers return shipping. I have found asking nice the first time around works pretty well.

Just checked..he has over 9000 sales and 100% feedback..
I'm sure he will do the right thing....

 

yeppers ... what they said ... in spades .
i have gone the same route with several cheesebay items/sellers .
i have only had a single experience of them stepping in and finding in my favor ...
all the rest capitulated after a couple of messages .
stick to your guns ... do not waiver .

you were sold a defective item .
you purchased said item in "good faith" that it was as described .
it was not and thus you have the right for a full refund and the shipping/incidental costs incurred .

 

Ha! You are free to rub that one in as often as you like! Especially as I said the same thing to my wife at dinner

I messaged the seller with nothing more than the message that it looked like the charging circuit was defective. He replied with a simple

-Damn - call my cell and tell me what you need-

And this morning when I powered it up, it's charging..... No more time to play with it until tonight. But at the moment it's working.

 

Round 3. I played some more with the MK1. I noticed this the other night but didn't have time to follow up on it. It's showing 32G used just for the initial install. Looks like 2G is actually a recovery partition, that I don't remember creating and don't need but the rest doesn't make sense. I searched the drive, exposed all hidden and system folders and can only come up with 15G used. Yet the drive is clearly showing 30G used. The acronis image shows the same thing, 30G. The system itself is working fine but that's about 17G of space used up for nothing. Any thoughts?

I tried the trick of using the MK2 drive in the M1 and it mostly worked except for the serial port and PCI communications are flagged. I played a bit with drivers but didn't get it. I thought maybe I'd just start over with the XP MK1 recovery disk and that says incompatible model.

The only thing I can see is to completely wipe the drive and do it all again. Vista recovery to the whole drive, SP1, Upgrade to 7.

 

pci communications is the dial up modem...

Easy fix for that

 

Try this,download the driver bundle for the mk2 and run it. I bet it fixes it. Remember to run as admin.

 

I will next time but I'm thinking it wouldn't load.

I'm deep in it. The MK2 is pretty close to being ready for software but windows update is hanging. Really wanted to get all those done and grab an image before I load any software at all. The MK1 is 75% of the way through loading upgrading to W7 from Vista again. I wrote down storage numbers at each step. We'll see what it comes out as this time.

Edit - success on the MK1! Normal space usages this time around. Just that 2G restore drive that I'll never use but I could always delete that if I needed too. Now if I could just get Windows update to work we'd be very very close to loading software finally.

 

Load the latest version of Internet Exploiter and then try the updates.....

 

Star Date 3/21 - I'm talking from planet CF52M2 - can anyone hear me?

All updates done and clean recovery image done. Ready to load software.

 

Awesome sauce....

No intelligent life here...

 

*something* about klingons and uranus ...
however , i shall digress .

i am not too jazzed about the charging circuit/battery malfunctioning at first .
breath holding is not advisable .

 

Might just be the battery also,I have had them arrive so dead they wouldn't charge for a few hours.

 

Hi Folks - Just wanted to update that all is well. Still some fine tuning on the software side but both machines are in use and working great. There's just absolutely no comparison between the speed of these, even the lowly MK1, compared to those CF-51s. I think they paid for themselves in the first week with how much faster I'm able to do what I need to do. For example Quickbooks was always a resource hog and if I had to close it on restart or something it took forever to accomplish. I can click to close, let it close, click to start and have it back open and ready for work in about 5 seconds. That's just nuts.

If I had to find something to complain about it would be battery life, that it still crashes USB ports when docking and the silly little doors. I may end up taking the USB door off. Battery life I don't know. I'm lucky to get two hours. I fondly remember the CF-50 with a 5 hour run time. Certainly manageable, but I may set up an ebay search for the drive bay battery option in case one shows up cheap sometime.

Otherwise, thanks Shawn for the parts and all the rest of you for the moral and technical support to make it happen!

 

Glad to hear that it's working out.
Yep, I removed the USB doors on mine too..
CF52 drive bay battery is hard to find....I have seen them once in a while..
SSD increases battery life some...Also dimming the screen makes a big difference.
Sometimes a battery re calibration is needed...The re-cal fully charges then fully discharges the battery..The purpose is to get an exact power curve so the battery meter is accurate...Otherwise the battery meter is just a guess.The Operating System gets the battery info from the BIOS...So a battery re-cal resets the battery info in the BIOS...
Some guys have got another hour out of battery life when the meter said it was at 10%...A battery re-calibration will solve that.
Check in the BIOS..There is a setting for environment (I think it's called that) If that is set to High Temperature the laptop will only charge the battery to 80%. Set it to Normal and it will charge to 100%..

 

Hard to find a battery that will give more then 3 hours in one of these,every so often I get a super yellow tab that will pull 4-5 hours but it's rare.

 

Also a LED conversion on the screen will give you more life on battery.

A new main battery would supply more battery life than just a media bay battery. Then you would have two batteries to swap in the field.