Win7 on CF-19

I have a CF-19 MK2 and just wanted to say that i am using Win7 OEM 32-bit and 64-bit and it works on it, just about three things are still left but should be the hotkey drivers.

i was running it on 64-bit but it was getting harder to install the missing programs and drivers but as far as performance everything is great, as for battery i can live with it(about 5 hours i think, have not tested or timed it but it lasts longer then normal laptops so im ok)

Not Working (both 32-bit and 64-bit)
hotkey drivers
PCI driver for ???? (works on 64-bit but not tried on 32-bit)
Switch program to turn off bluetooth or wifi from windows
Gobi card (most likely wont work on Win7 until it is updated to support it)

[Im happy just how it is, so i just installed 32-bit and same results as the 64-bit(everything works, usable right after install) so i not yet tried installing drivers as i need it for every day work]

Working (both 32-bit and 64-bit)
Touchscreen (Can be calibrated with the tablet pc options in the control panel)
Wifi
Bluetooth
and everything else

I do not know if the internal gps works as my does not have it, but i think it will.

just send me a message if you cant find the oem, i think sailors can help

 

I am thinking of trying it out. few questions is yours digitizer? did you do a clean install or upgrade?

 

I believe it is a digitizer but im still a noob on toughbooks, and i did a clean install.

 

I'm thinking of installing the vista recovery then upgrading. One forum member claimed less problems that way. do your front buttons work?


ps I wouldn't be making references to pirating that's not cool. besides with and edu email you can get a legit copy for $20 bucks.

 

Well I installed it yesterday. Results are as follows:

Hotkeys worked but were using up 50-60 %cpu power all the time! HKEYapp.exe? (not sure if that is right) is a resource hog. also the onscreen diplay letting you know how bright, Battery life was not showing anyway. so I just switched it off in Autoruns and am using the front buttons for brightness adjustment..

everything else is working including autorotation. I still need to use it for a few days to notice any bugs,etc. I did it the long way. I nuked XP, recovered with the Vista disc, installed service pack 1, uinstalled some programs and then upgraded.
I followed all the instructions on the toughbook site for upgrading to Win 7.
so far no problems,but it has only been a few hours.

Forgot to add ask any questions in particular, sorry for the disjointedness of the post was up all night doing this.lol

 

That is good info

I would bet that you are not the only one with this issue
Some might not even realize this is happening

You will have to experiment with drivers for the hotkeys or driver order
To me the screen must dim down , it was an issue on several models that I installed W7 beta on last spring, and ended up going back to XP as I need to dim the screen




Alex

 

well the screen does dim down,or up, you just can't see the onscreen indicator (the little triangle like thing). I never use hibernate so that was a wash. The Fn/Battery icon. did not show up either.Volume keys worked, no display either though. have not tried Monitor switch key yet
I found out just by messing around in the performance tests win 7 has.
I kept getting prompts such as "a program is increasing boot time" (paraphrased) would you like to disable? I did not do it at first because I wanted the function. finally in task manager the thing was up high. I figured it would die down, you know maybe just a spike. Nope kept usage high for the whole half hour i checked.
It is the hotkey manager. not the hotkey driver itself,because after turning it off in Autoruns. the keys still work (in that half assed way where there is no display, but they do the actions)

TLDR: disable the panasonic hotkey manager/hkeyapp.exe the FN keys will still work. This a CF-19FXXXX which makes it an MK2 . All the drivers on Pannys site worked except the modem,but windows installed a generic one, for those times you need dial-up

 

quick post if you press the FN/mute key combination it will mute your pc and you can not unmute it unless you enable hotkey manager. so if you do it accidentally like I did re-enable, unmute and then turn it off again. i thought of giving it another chance,but still 50 to 100 % cpu usage. ! just that app. weird.


also installed 4gb but windows 7 can only use 3.24 gb on this chipset. the bios sees the 4gb and the OS sees it,but it says only 3.24 available for use. from googling it seems the chipset or Win 7 32 bit is to blame will keep looking.

after further googling it seem Win 7 32 bit can only address that much ram. has anyone else installed the 64 bit version on the CF-19?? is it even recommended?

 

Hi guys
Just to say, Better of staying with the OS that the TuffBooks were made with.
Why bother with the hassle.

 

Because THAT'S WHAT THIS FORUM IS ALL ABOUT; trying to find NEW FUNCTIONALITY for our beloved ToughBooks. You got a machine that will LAST a decade; you need to do upkeep so it REMAINS USEFUL over that lifespan.

mnem
Otherwise, whats the point?

 

well my CF-28 and 30 are running XP so all my vital stuff is there. I just wanted to play around with it, it's so pretty. goes with the "cute" factor of the CF-19,lol.

 

Vista and W7 have more refined and superior features than XP and XP tablet o/s on the tablet Toughbooks cf-18 and cf-19
If you are willing to experiment , as we are here you will find out for yourself


Alex

 

Ok agree with ya on that 1,,
but be more for the hardware mods myself...

 

well been running fine for a couple of days now and no problems so far. I have added an 8gb sdhc card formatted in exfat for 7.4 gb of readyboost memory. i have turned it over to my niece for a burn in test. she's usually on some sort of IM client, watching youtube, surfing and listening to music. So we will see if it holds up.

few observations.
I am thinking the onscreen displays for brightness etc, don't work is because of the way Windows 7 renders the desktop and aero?

Tip to get to the CF-19 built in diagnostic utility press CTRl + F7 on boot.

The CF-19 does get a little warmer than my CF-30 I hardly notice the heat on the 30. I assume from the smaller form factor means less casing to dissipate heat= higher body temp.

 

hmmmm. All of my on-screen displays work on my MK1 CF-19 with WIN7. I have everything running except for the auto-rotate function on the lid... or so I thought. Turns out I am getting a MISC driver error trying to run the battery recal or dmi viewer. I remember seeing a fix for this somewhere, but not really concerned with this yet. Did you try following the step-through guide for the WIN7 install on the CF-18 posted here? That is all I did and it worked perfectly from the first try.

 

Frankly, I would say if anyone outside of Panasonic was capable of "certifying" a model of the Toughbook for Windows 7, or any OS, it would be this forum.

I am working through issues finding a suitable Bluetooth Stack for Win7 right now, and if I fail to figure it out by myself, I am sure that others here will be able to help me!

 

well I got the display on the FN keys to work,but the brightness will not dim up or down. volume is fine, mute, etc. all work. I finally got sick and tired of trying and quit.

I installed on a spare drive to my CF-30 and everything works including the damn fn keys and their appropriate display. any ideas on getting the brightness working on the cf-19. it is not really important as there are multiple waysof adjusting that in windows 7 ( mobility controls, power features, etc)for that. it's just buggin me.

 

UPDATE
well I finallly figured out the damn brightness/fn key problem. It seems I let windows update the graphics driver and that screwed the pooch. After removing and reinstalling various hotkey,hotkey appendix, hotkey setting drivers etc. dozens of times, I read a post somewhere about some Nvidia card video/graphicss driver and its inf file having the same effect on another laptop, so I reinstalled the Vista video driver for MK2(from panny japan site). And... everything works the blue icon on the screen, cpu usage is normal (not spiking to 70%), hitting mute without the hotkey appendix install will not mute it permanently til you reinstall,etc. Man who knew the graphics driver was so tied in to the hotkey functions. So don't install any upgraded driver from intel. use the Panny ones or you might have problems. this applies to a non-supported CF-19 MK2 upgrade from Vista to Win 7. everything will work if you follow the upgrade procedure in the Panny pdf file. Just don't let windows update your video graphics driver, as that will screw things up. I let windows update everything else with no problems (nic,wifi, etc). sorry for the ramble hope this will help someone.

UPDATE AGAIN.
after a few more tests and reinstalling windows 7 again I deduced that you do need to upgrade the video driver and then downgrade. installed by itself it won't work correctly, upgrading won't work correctly, upgrading then downgrading works!! this took me a long saturday and lots of beer.lol.