My"Orange Edition" CF-19 (MK1) reboot!

Well my orange beast is back after two weeks of being borrowed and abused. I have my nice, freshly built MK6, but instead I am using this old, SLOW thing. I have at least two threads out there "how do I fix this," so I think it is time to actually DO something with it.

So, why haven't I yet? Well, it works. I use it for pretty critical tuning and diagnostics on my cars, and for work. It is setup pretty butter. I know where everything is. I have my menus tweaked to perfection. For instance, my Panasonic mene has the manuals for this, all the software links, Panasonic Driver Download Manager, and several other very useful Panny type links. Including the best one, a link here (also in my favorites bar for Exploder)!

This machine also has 6-7yrs of junk. Broken software, registry junk, etc. Why not do a backup and reload? Mainly, I can't afford the aggravation of loosing anything. And this is a MK1 running Windows 7. Somehow, I am running a legit version of W7 too. I either hacked it perfectly years ago when I built it, or figured out a way to get a legit copy. I think I put a Dell OEM image into it and changed out the logo.

What are its problems?
1) Slow. Mostly just on the internet. It can take 15 seconds or more to load webpages. This site kills it with all the silly flash ads crap. And to make matters worse, I stick with Explorer. The others just don't do it for me. Illogical, but whatever.

1.1) Key strokes sometimes lag on the internet. Especially the backspace. I type a good bit faster than they appear.

2) A little rough around the edges. Needs its paint touched up.

3) Palmrest. This deserves its own tab. The paint on it has gotten soft and dull from oil, grease, cleaners and whatnot where the hands always rest. Otherwise, the paint masking lines are PERFECT. I got them so crisp when I did it that you would probably need a magnifying glass to tell it was painted by "hand."

4) Hardware upgrades? Not really much to upgrade, more like missing stuff to replace... I need new screen/screw bumpers. All the bottom case screws are missing. For some reason my GPS side bump is missing? (Probably just on my workbench.)

5) Keyboard, this gets its own tabs. Tuning at night sucks. I LOVE the standard keyboard for typing. I don't really "need" to type much on this, mostly just taking notes on tuning changes (so enough I still need a usable keyboard). I "might" swap in my chiclet backlit keyboard and put this in my MK6.

5.1) A USB gooseneck light or modding the bottom of the screen with a couple LEDs might work too. If I can tap into a USB port (or 5v) up in the screen lid this might be a feasible alternative to the backlit keyboard.

5.2) And the one thing I HATE about CF-19, the arrow keys. This is one small detail that has almost pushed me into a CF-30 or CF-31 for tuning multiple times. I use the arrows constantly to move around and adjust maps. If I don't have light to see them, I am still messing them up. I don't know a solution for this. I can move and remap keys, but no really good ergonomic layout presents itself. If the shift and up key could be swapped, shift now up, and right moved over and now down, this would work. But I can't make the keys match that.

A possible solution is a separate keypad or something like that. It would need to be affixed somehow to the laptop as I don't have a desk when tuning and need an all-in-one solution.

I would LOVE some sort of surface mount low profile keypad that I can modify into the palmrest with arrow keys on one side of the touchpad, and a couple other keys on the other.

Years ago I found a super cool USB Oscilloscope controller with a jog wheel and everything. I can't find it anymore. I found some video shuttles that could work. Something like that could serve dual purpose, but they were on the big side too.

What is the plan?

1) Clean up. I do a super clean on this every year or so. But time to do so again. Dump old junk, clean up old files, registry cleaner, all that. Get it as minimal as possible for the next step.

2) The SSD drive upgrade has lived on my workbench for over a year now. I want to get that in here without having to start over fresh. I don't think Acronis will let me do this. This has been the deal killer every time.

3) Sort or eliminate anti-virus. This may actually be my biggest speed issue.

4) Determine what hardware mods to do, if any. Any invasive ones will need to happen before repainting.

5) Repaint, maybe...

I have to remember though, this is a cheap MK1. If somebody offered me $200 for it, I would probably take it, but cleaned up without my data on it (obviously). Much more than $50 in parts or more than a days worth of work, also might not be worth it to me.

Still, I have spent $200-300 and GOBS of time on a few newer faster machines and keep coming back to this one. Its blemishes, broken plastic bits, paint chips, and most of its other defects, don't usually bother me too much.

So questions? For now I just have one... What is the best upgrade path to take with the SSD? Meaning should I install Vista on it, get my drivers working, then do an upgrade to W7? Then manually back up all my data, or just clone the drive over?

In most instances, some version of a fresh upgrade is the best path. Not sure if that is the case here.

I almost wish I could just transfer all the goodies over to my MK6, and sell this one. I actually have a potential buyer for a stripped down cheap tuning laptop (I just sold a car to him). I just keep holding onto this one for some reason.

 

Buy another caddy
Put in $35 SSD
Put new caddy with SSD in CF19
Do clean install of Win7
Take a week and install drivers and get them all working.
Upload tuning stuff.
Transfer over anything you need from old drive after SSD Win7 is up and running.
Save old drive for future "oh crud where is that file"
Sell old CF19 with $35 SSD for $200.
Spend $200 on new Toughbook stuff that you don't need but really want anyway.

Or Format C:
Install Linux anything
Watch CF 19 mk1 run really good
Sell CF19 for same $200 as a Linux box and let new owner deal with it.
Spend $200 on new Toughbook stuff that you don't need but really want anyway.

 

Send me the 50$ and I'll send you a gps cover thing and two keyboards.

An aside: Why did they use that keyboard layout? CF-M34 has a smaller keyboard and the keys are "in the right place".

 

Because you can graduate engineering school with a D.
Not all engineers are A students.

 

Sheepman, I found the GPS cover sitting on my workbench. I have no clue why I removed it from this machine. So you can keep that, but if your talking about two CF-19 emissive chiclet keyboards for $50, you have a deal! Working ones though lol...

Lol Shawn! Yeah, because I need more Toughbook junk to mess with!

I really wish the damn caddys weren't so expensive. Something about that magic $50 mark. I have the SSD already, I may only have paid $25 for it. LOL... I think the stopping point has been the time it takes to swap drives back and forth with a single caddy. Back to the above, I really should grab another one.

I am digging through my original build thread for this and see if it offers any clues to the OS install path I went down. So far I am just rambling too much, big surprise.

I have also run it on Linux for ages now with the hidden "dual boot" trick. And ran it on Linux when I first bought it too. I just have so much software that is a pain to install in windows, I shudder to think about trying to do so with Linux using a VM... My primary software actually can be installed in Linux. But not the rest of the goodies I use almost as often.

My biggest speed hog in windows is actually my anti-virus software. The MK1 locked up earlier when I hit the first post here. A few minutes later it unfroze and an AVG pop-up came up. Pretty sure that was caused by AVG phoning home.

Yeah I can't really decipher how I finally got it the first time. On page three now lol... So I am going to try again to simply clone the drive over with Acronis. If that doesn't work, I will have to delve deeper.

 

I could tape a flashlight to the keyboards. They are both circa CF-18...one with additional yellow characters on the keys.

 

Just sayin

 

Mehhhh I am probably going to just live with it. I do like those USB goosenecks though! But, they cause me to loose my ip68 rating HAHA! The price of the backlit chiclets has come down enough to be a serious consideration. Especially when I have one on hand I can change out. But, I have to decide what I am doing with my MK6 CF-19 first....

I may have one sold later today, but I already ordered another one. I am pretty indecisive what my final plan is going to be for these.

Whatever.

So I spent several hours falling asleep on the couch while doing updates on the MK1 here and the MK6. I cleaned out some old programs and made adjustments then did housecleaning with CCleaner. The MK1 seems noticeably quicker now. I didn't go on the internet, but it was booting up and down MUCH faster.

So for now I will continue with the "free" version of the plan for this beastie. I am still hoping for a suggestion to use for free to clone the drive over to the SSD. Acronis "might" do it in the paid version, but the free guy doesn't. I actually HAD a paid version of Acronis... But for some reason it stopped working meh. No idea where it is now.

 

I thought of SuperDuper which I’ve used...but that is for Mac
Search popped a Free HD Clone for windows, Clonzilla, and others.
Try a few free ones and report back.
Paid version of Acronis works very well.
I did 4-5 Mk3 30’s with win 7 few years ago.
That also works with 19’s MK 2-3 back in the day.
Your time and energy is important...$50 seems like cheap insurance.

 

https://www.miray-software.com/HDClone

 

If Super Duper will save a clone of a windows drive to an image file, then put it on the SSD drive... Lets find out!

EDIT: Okay I pulled the drive and cabled it to my Mac. I have an unregistered copy of Super Duper. It wouldn't see the drive to copy, but it will let me load an image. So, using disk utility to make an image.

It may or may not work. And it was probably an extra step than just using another option like HDClone. But hey, might as well try to make my MacBook useful.

It is taking a SERIOUSLY long time...

 

Not surprisingly that didn't work. It would have worked, if I had the paid basic version. This has a 100GB drive, the SSD a 90GB drive.

So I shut down, turned on my WWAN card, and booted into linux. Installed the GParted package and resized the 100GB partition down to 78GB. As of yet I haven't rebooted, but it looks like it went smoothly.

I am trying to clone/copy the internal drive over to the cabled SSD one. I can't usually seem to get them bootable though so we shall see if that works. If not, I should be able to use the HDClone software from inside windows.

Or I will check to see if there is a cloning software package I can install for Linux. Not very comfortable inside Linux, but might as well try.

 

This has been posted before but here it is again.
How to clone HDD to SSD with Windows 7′s own software

https://editorsean.com/articles/clone-hdd-ssd-windows-7-software/

 

I might have been unclear...
Super duper is for Mac Only...
The one Shawn linked is a windows way to do it...
The free one I linked should work for you as well...

 

UNCNDL1 HDClone did the trick! Sorta...

Shawn, I didn't know that! All the years I have been abusing W7 and I didn't know you could do that from INSIDE of Windows! I need to look a bit closer at that just for a simpler backup...

So I think the issue I have had in the past with the "free" softwares (and you have to do this using Windows too) is I had been missing a critical step. I hadn't been shrinking the source drive first.

So step one today was to try out the cloned drive made with Linux. (I already shrunk the drive down last night.) That didn't work, so I rebooted back into linux. The issue was something not rewriting the MBR to get the drive to actually boot. Or perhaps a complete lack of MBR...I checked the bootable tribute, but that didn't fix it.

Mental note: Next time try changing the boot order in bios, then reboot and change it back coerrectly to try and force a MBR rewrite. I was getting a flashing cursor at the top left, so it wasn't failing completely, just confused and not booting. I almost had it.

So, I swapped drives back... Now I had the source platter drive shrunk down to a size smaller than the target drive. I booted up and after a disc check, all was well. Fired up HDClone FREE, and the cloning job went off without a hitch.

First boot up it figured out it was a different drive and installed drivers. Rebooted. Everything was locked up. None of the buttons were working. I rebooted again and all was well.

All of this was done with the laptop sitting on my toolbox today in brief moments stolen between working on cars. It was super easy actually!

So the GOTCHA in the process was trying to use free software and cut out a step. The source drive simply has to be smaller (or same size would likely work too) than the target drive. Windows needs it done that way too. I was able to easily resize the drive in Linux.

I am probably going to try out the Windows method too. But I don't have an extra SSD drive to do so at the moment. And I have to resize the platter drive bigger again to get back to the initial starting point. Arrggghhhh lol! I have another MK6 on its way, so I will probably give it a shot with that one.

The MK1's battery is dead now and my coworker has my power brick so I have it sitting on the docking station in the garage. Sadly I haven't gotten to use it yet, soon!!!

 

I know, it is installed on my Mac! But, I think it would have worked too if I had a smaller source to larger or same target drive. It was actually kinda working. Not sure if the issue was the drive sizes, or the windows format. But it saw everything happily.

 

Well MASSIVE improvements everywhere, except the internet. Explorer locked up three times trying to post this. And I was only a few sentences in. I switched to Chrome and it is doing better, but it already froze up for a minute when I tried to correct a misspelled word.

I don't expect to get away with 20 tabs open, or more than 1-2 really. But being able to use it on the internet would be nice. Without resorting to booting it up in Linux. Battery is all the way run down again so I have it back on my docking station. I will let it recharge then give a good tryout.

I uninstalled AVG and went with Microsoft Security Essentials. It did a "quick" scan of the computer. The quick scan took almost 3hrs for only 50gb of data on here! I could care less about that,b ut it didn't find any of the software I have stuffed into folders here and there that EVERY OTHER anti-virus I have used tried to delete.

I have some Windows cracking software that should have popped up warnings. And more than one of my diagnostics packages are cracked and usually pop up warnings. I am mildly concerned. It is nice I didn't have to do anything, but can MSE actually protect me from real threats if it doesn't find the credible hacking tools I have sitting here???

 

I use Comodo AV on my public machine and Kaspersky at home.

 

This is a few years old, but probably still accurate:

https://www.howtogeek.com/173291/go...w-recommends-you-use-a-third-party-antivirus/

Seems that they have improved in last 2 years, but newer articles still leave doubt about Defender's ranking:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/micro...av-isnt-ranked-higher-in-new-antivirus-tests/

https://it.slashdot.org/story/18/05...der-isnt-ranked-higher-in-new-antivirus-tests

 

Those were some really awesome and very informative articles! This is one interesting line:

I am kinda leaning towards just keeping Windows defender and or MSE for my antivirus on the Orange Beast. So far, even with the SSD upgrade, it is impossible to browse online consistently. Internet Exploder is the worst culprit, but Chrome wasn't doing much better. I may try Firefox, but I am not holding out much hope. Once I have to move away from IE, I loose a lot of functionality that I need. A lot of my work based websites require me to use IE. So this could be a machine killer.

And that is almost okay. At work I am not going to use my laptop for anything that has to be secure. No eBay, no bank accounts, nothing like that. Google and Youtube would be nice. Almost everything I download, I do it on my Mac. I have AVG on it. I usually know when I am downloading potentially questionable software.

Basically at work, I am not "browsing" around and wasting time. I am using Google for searches and a couple known secure websites. Mostly the machine is used for tuning, my oscilloscope, and a couple programs for diagnosing and hacking into automotive modules.

 

Okay breaking this up as I don't want this lost in the above post.

It is locking up CONSTANTLY. It seems to be locking up due to update checks, or anytime it phones into the internet for something. It has been doing Windows updates past three days and a couple keep failing. I am taking a guess this is likely most of the issue. I will give it a few more days to get it sorted out and try to get it running stable.

So far it is MUCH faster when it is working. I can't say how any of my software programs are behaving, as I don't have anything I can connect them up to right now.

Getting it usable and stable on the internet is going to be the challenge. If I can't use it for the minimal internet access I want, then I need to rethink how I plan to use it, and if I want to even bother keeping it. For sure it won't be getting any more upgrades or real effort put into it.

I am going to try and run Defraggler on it. I am not sure how the cloning works, but if it left things in disorder like a platter drive usally is, then Defraggler's reordering scheme will likely get me some space back too. And sounds like it would do better for a SSD drive.

 

Maybe plug it in directly to the router via LAN port and let it on and connected overnight.
That way it will complete all the updates and be done with them.

 

Another thing that causes extreme internet slowdown is computer trying to install Windows 10 in background. Have you taken any steps to prevent that? (Never10 maybe?) MS is really trying to shove this down everyone's throat.

 

$#!+ I thought they stopped doing that. Well whatever the case I refused and hid that update long ago for this. Still I should do a little more digging there period.

But I opened process manager and found the problem, 35 instances of googlechrome.exe running.

Everytime I spell a word wrong and click to redo, it locks up. I rebooted, and already have 40 instances...

Yeah, so that browser isn't going to work. I will try a couple more things, then admit temporary defeat and put the platter drive back in. I have another MK6 sitting here I need to get checked out and started on.

At least now I know that the "process" to clone works and retains everything. Now to just get the internet issues sorted, or upgrade for keeps to a MK6.

 

Have you tried firefox on it? I still use that as my main browser. Even got a portable version out if you don't want to do a full install.

 

Ador, I will give that a try! I did submit to the temporary defeat though... I absolutely HAD to have the MK1 fully up and running for a tuning job. I needed to play musical HDDs with my MK6's, as I was short a drive for one I needed to deliver. Hey gotta support my Toughbook addiction somehow...

But, I may have a completely different clue into my internet issues. The cable modem died this morning. This is like the third modem in almost as many years. So I will sort that out and make sure this is ready to go with updates and other tweaks needed. Give Firefox a shot and see how that does.

 

I know I will regret this but,
Why?
Waterfox is based on Firefox. They are both 64 bit.
As far as I know Waterfox is based on Firefox ESR 56. Which is a year and a half old.
The latest Firefox ESR is 60.6.1

 

Care to elaborate some User32?

Soooo I still have no internet (tethered through phone right now)... The issue doesn't appear to be the modem, according to the EXPERTS in India. Whatever it is. I haven't taken the time to further troubleshoot it. Point being that whatever caused the 35-40+ instances of chrome.exe to run, might be what failed.

 

My first guess is some sort of malware.
Second guess is a program what is trying to phone home for some reason. One of those "thanks for installing our crap" web pages that pop up after the install.

 

Well my new caddy and a bigger 240Gb SSD just arrived, so I can play musical HDD again. The 90Gb SSD will go back into this one. Trying to motivate myself to tackle that tonight. I actually need to tune with the computer tomorrow, so I will be keeping the platter drive in a caddy just in case.

I need to do the cloning trick again.

The Modem took a dump. I think the 30+ incidences were it dropping the connection and trying to relink. A new modem and internet seems to be back to normal.