Received my CF-28 today

Great machine, good condition. It's a CF-28PCJGEPM. However, I upgraded it to xp pro then found that drivers are real scarce for it. The ones on Panasonics site don't work for the configuration that I have. So I went back to Win 2k. For right now I have it running but the drivers seem to be a problem. Windows wont even tell me what the hardware is so that I can go to each individual site to get the drivers. Oh well my mistake. I was provided with a ghost image of the original drive but the seller forgot to include the ghost boot floppy. He will be sending it out next week. Anyways before I tried to upgrade it, it was fully functional with the factory software. Does anyone know if Panasonic still has restore disks for their old models? The US Panasonic website has none that will work, However DJACID posted the UK site for them and they have a couple of drivers. It would be great to get the original disks though. That will teach me to start something without a lot of research.

 

did you try this site????????
https://eww.pavc.panasonic.co.jp/pc/cgi-bin/itn/toughbook/dl01.cgi

 

do you have any pics you can put up????
would love to see how it is????????

 

Bigfoot... PM me your email address... I'll email you drivers for everything you need. I pad $20 on ebay for drivers for all the variants... 98, Win2k, XP, etc. Some of them are exe files that you just click on. Others you have to go into Device Mgr and click on the yellow question mark and then click on "update driver" or "find driver" to install it. My touchscreen gave me FITS!!! You actually don't show the question mark... You have to open up the mouse/touchpad driver and click on "update driver" and then point it to the folder with the TS driver.

Lemme know and I'll email them off.

 

pm sent. Thanks

 

Well, I found a copy of Norton ghost 10 and was able to reimage the drive. So everything is good for now. At least until I can upgrade to xp pro.

 

Drivers emailed!

 

well as i was saying my mate bought a toughbook of ebay as well,
cost him £350pounds
and it has the same model number CF-28PCJGEPM as that, but when i saw it yesterday it didnt have a gps on the side,
only thing it had was the wifi inside not sure which one through but he is upgrading his one today i gave him the winxp cd and told him to get the drivers of the net......
if anything and he has the same problem i'll let you know toughbook for help with his drivers......

 

I'm able to find all drivers from Panasonic.ca (Canadian). I've had troubles with some of the Japanese drivers for some reason... Like the USB CD drive, I was able to use the floppy boot drivers from panasonic canada and hack them up to see the CD drive (Was able to half install windows that way, but it's SLOOOOOOWW. Took 16 hours and I gave up, and bought a proper drive), but the drivers from japan didn't even boot from the floppy to begin with.

Though, I suppose I'd be interested in getting the drivers from the CD that you've got. If you make it into an .ISO, I could host it for everybody to download/burn.

 

Thanks everyone for the help. All the drivers worked. XP pro is on line and updating. DJACID, I will try to get pictures this week.

 

glad to know you have sorted it out.....
how is ur gps working and in device properties what is it showing up as........

 

i recieved my cf-28 today
what a machine, reminds me of a volvo 240 or pre '90 chevy caprice.
this thing just feels right.
ive swapped the hard drive over, twas tricky but only a ten minute operation.
i can see peoples concern over heat, that thing really is cocooned in shielding and foam.
i put some of the ram from my vaio successully.. big d'oh i forgot the vaio took 2x128 MB's, not the single 256 i was hoping for, so i'll be watching djacid for his experience with putting 512 block in his.

i'll mention it later in the right forum for those interested in what is supposed to be inside these things, but i found something in the slot under the harddrive as well as what i believe is the gps next to the ram.

beyond it booting a CD i have nothing to report on the operation front
no doubt i'll be back later hassling people for drivers

one interesting note, i have a win2k key underside and a XP compatible sticker ontop opposite the pIIIm sticker, that sticker does look old and original.

 

what that sticker says is designed for winxp, even though when it was built win2000 was sold with it,
it is also compatible with winxp that what it mean, also you will only get one product key the winxp or thhe win2000, unless its a duel boot model and then u will get both......
the 2 mini pci cards you have under ur caddy ones for ur modem and lan and the other is for ur gps.............
post man just left and nope no ram, still waiting for the 512mb i orders also the 2gb ram for the dell laptop........

 

As soon as I started to load XP service pack 2, I started to get error after error, then the blue screen of death. So I figure the copy of win 2k is the problem child. I know my copies of xp and sp2 are good (they run fine on the rest of my laptops). So I went ahead and formatted the drive in fat 32, loading a good copy of 98ME, then I will load XP on top of it. I did this for a bunch of our machines here at work and I have never had a problem with them.

 

More issues, said it couldn't validate. Won't let me log on.
Well back to win 2k I guess. at least it works.

 

pm me tomorrow and let me know the version of the cd and i'll help you out with it.........
i just installed vista ultimate edition onto my one.......

 

I think its a hardware problem, rather than software. No matter what I use explorer has errors then closes. I wonder if it had been dropped too many times. I am using a corporate version that is being used on about 3000 different machines at work. I think they licensed it for about 5000 machines.

 

if it was a hardware problem it will show up soon as you start windows and let you know also the bios will tell you about any hardware problems,
what you are describing is a comon problems ppl have told me what the main problem is the cd could be dirty or not reading write in ur cd player, best get a fresh copy and try the install again......
i have a software called xp repair which tells you what the problems are and also help you fixing them.......
let me know if you want it and i'll upload it for you........

 

It could be the cd player. The latest re-image I did seems to be less of a problem, even though I tried to upgrade to XP off an external hard drive and it did the same thing. Maybe if I step back from it for a bit I could see if I was doing something wrong.

 

have you got any other windows cd you can try?????

 

unfortunely no. I just have the one image and burn a disk when I need it.

 

always try burning at the lowest speed
if an image has alot of files its ability to error check goes down, so those errors made at higher speed you can usually ignore become a problem.
well, this is what i've read somewhere cause i had a similar problem recently.
also worth a look in the cd reader, make sure theres no dust laying about, and have a look at that lens, stick a lens cleaner cd in there to be sure if you still have problems.

 

Will do thanks.

 

With win 2k it seems the more I use it, The less problems crop up. I have rebooted it several times and run error checks on it and it seems to have settled down. I dont think I will mess with it anymore since I have it working.

 

James is right... Slower burns mean less errors. I learned that after many coasters.

 

also depends on ur burner if you burn it at 4x speed and ur dvd or cd drive is a 8x you'll have problems reading from that disk..........
best check ur toughbook and see what speed it reads at and then burn the cd at the right speed so you wont get any error or some times the drive doesnt even read the cd..............

 

Ok after all this time working on this mk2 I finally figured out what the problem was. It has a bad cd drive. I used my mk3 to setup a new hard drive with XP, put it in the mk2 and no more problems. Works like it should. So now I have two working cf-28's with XP pro. Now all I have to do is sort out the GPS issue on the mk2. The mk3 seems to get a lock a lot faster. I may invest in a copy of Microsoft maps & streets to see if it works with the on board gps's.

 

What are you going to do with your CD drive? I'l buy it if you want to sell it! I'll Paypal you immediately! Mine was also bad in the last one I bought.

 

I was thinking about stuffing a slimline drive into the caddy. So far everything seems to work. If I start having more problems with the mk2 I will probably part it out.