Windows 7 and CF-74 mk3

I want to upgrade to Windoz 7 but Panasonic driver support is only available for CF-74[J/K]C mk4, I have a CF-74G/H mk3.

Anyone have success? I have used Panasonic driver by driver install for XP on my CF-72, so I am just hoping for some advice.

Thanks--Mark

 

Is this a Farmer's Insurance CF-74? CF-74GCE02BM or CF-74GCE01BM

Win 7 works just fine with the Vista drivers.

 

No, not a Farmer's Ins pc, I bought it new 3 years ago, came with XP installed, but had both Vista Biz and XP Panasonic re-install DVD's. I am a GM technician and at the time Vista wasn't supported, now they support Vista Biz and Windows 7 Pro, 32 and 64 bit. I was thinking I would like to move up to 7.

Your not talking the drivers from Panasonic support are you? My experience with them is they only install on the intended model, unless there is a way to unpack them from the installer.

 

The Panasonic Vista drivers for a CF-74 Mk3. They will work with Win 7 on your CF-74. I have installed this on my CF-74 Mk3. You may not need all the Vista drivers for acceptable performance.

 

Thanks for your reply, I appreciate it much!!

 

Well some more questions...always more questions!!

Are the drivers the same for 32 & 64 bit software?

And, can a larger amount of RAM be used with 64 bit Windoz 7? I understand that 4gb of RAM is max for Vista 32bit, which I have installed now, or does the machine limit the max amount?

Thanks again.

 

No, the drivers are not the same. 32bit drivers may work with 64bit Win 7 but, don't bet on it. Until recently Panasonic only supported 32bit OS. All older models have only 32bit drivers.

Actually, 32bit OS can only use approx. 3.25gb ram, even though you may install 4gb. Yes, 64bit OS can use much more ram than most any PC can handle.

 

Well I installed windows 7 pro as upgrade from factory Vista biz. All went well, had some odd "IE closed suddenly" messages after a restart, it wanted to restore last session or open home page, it worked good after doing a reset IE8 to defaults and start over fresh. I cannot report any bad things, the touch screen worked, calibration went well, the tablet options were all working so I find it is safe to do an inplace upgrade of Vista Business to 7 Pro.

But...I couldn't leave it at that, I had that 64 bit disc just sitting there begging me to install it.

I know now that to do a clean install with an upgrade DVD, you must have a qualifying windows OS on the hard drive, even if you boot from upgrade disk. I said my validation key was "invalid".
I had cleared the HD with g-parted and had to reload the Panasonic Vista image so I could just install over it! I guess that it scans the HD and finds the old OS and keeps files in a folder "OLD WINDOWS" gotta look into how to delete that folder now that I am up and running. Then it took my key.

I have W7 pro in C partition, them W8 (for fun) in E partition, XP in F partition, and soon to have Ubuntu 12.04 in what would be G.

The Seagate Momentus XT hybrid 750 gb hard drive gives me room to have the extras. It has 8 gb solid state for faster file retrieval, 32 mb cashe, and 7200 rpm. I am very impressed with the boot time, from power button press to boot select screen, to password entry to desktop and able to launch IE 9 is near 1 minute! Shut down is like 10 seconds if there are no updates.

Seeing as my model isn't "officially" supported as windows 7 upgrade from Panasonic drivers page, I only had 2 devices come up as "unknown", I took a chance, downloaded the windows 7 drivers for the CF-74j (I have a "G"). I tried the Hotkey driver first, and voilà! It worked! So I tried the misc driver for the other device and now I have no yellow exclamation points. I am not going to load all the others as everything else seems great. I did get the Toshiba Bluetooth stack I found and downloaded, I do not like the Windows bluetooth software. The bluetooth is available from Panasonic downloads as well.

I just thought someone may care to find out that Windows 7 64 bit with 4 gb of ram and the Seagate Momentus work super on this Toughbook. I am really happy as I use this at work also. I plan to keep it for a while yet, maybe sell my two CF-72's and use the cash for another 74 as a backup.