Windows 10 working on two different TBs; black screen fixed

Experiences with CF-SX2 and CF-W8.

1. I bought the SX2 less than a year before Windows 10 was released. By that time, Panasonic had already abandoned support for the model. No new drivers or bios, no support for Win 10 upgrade. I took a chance a couple of months ago anyway. The upgrade was easy and flawless. Kudos to Microsoft, none to Panasonic.

2. My older Toughbook is a CF-W8. It was running Windows 7, using a driver package provided by Panasonic. I put off until yesterday upgrading to Win 10: Ain't broke, why fix? I hadn't been using the machine, so I figured that I might as well try the upgrade. No loss if it didn't work, particularly if I could restore Win 7 for 30 days.

It was slow, but the install seemed to go as well as for the SX2. I added a user, encrypted some files, did some tweaking. What I did not do was set a system restore point when all was running. That came back to haunt me when I thought rolling back might be a solution.

Ok, all working. Then since I hadn't been using the machine, I was curious about the battery. I ran the Panasonic battery recalibration utility overnight. In the morning, I rebooted and clicked on the battery icon in the taskbar. There was a square with a sun symbol and 100%. I wasn't sure what it meant, but I clicked on it. Screen went black and stayed black.

From that point on, all I could do was force shutdown and reboot each time into a black screen. That was before the Lock Screen appeared. I was only able to boot Safe Mode with Networking. I downloaded and ran Driver Talent. It said all my drivers were good. Tried to reboot in log mode - black screen.

Basically, the only way I could do anything was to boot Safe Mode with Networking. From there, I thought I might just revert to Win 7. From MS: Settings > Update & security > Recovery and select Go back to Windows 7. Problem was that in Safe Mode, clicking Update & Security does nothing. I was stuck in a Catch 22.

I thought about the oddity of the totally black screen. (Not a BSOD.) Then I had a silly idea. What if clicking on that power save icon had somehow switched my display from the laptop screen to external display mode? Totally illogical. Anyway, I hit shift-F3 to change display and BAM, screen restored! All is well now.

 

Thanks for the info.

 

Great fix!

Glad to see Windows 10 is playing nice with so many of our older systems. I was really surprised by how smoothly my CF-30 MK3 upgraded too. Same as you said, kudos to Microsoft. Panasonic gets no credit for telling me it was unsupported!

I personally don't know anything about the systems you tried it on, but are they both 32-bit, or does either one have 64-bit support? (I'm a bit curious at how well the 32-bit version runs on the older Toughbooks out there in comparison).

 

FYI....All manufacturers will tell you the same thing (HP, Dell, Acer, Intel). It would cost them millions of dollars to supply drivers for all the older computers plus they want you to buy new ones.

 

Great point!