Windows 7 issues + Toughbook Model Status

CF-18 MK1 Perfect (Read members post) rcx

CF-18 MK2 Digitizer Perfect (Read members posts) Martin4x4

CF-19 MK2 Perfect (Read members post) eno801

Cf-28 Mk 2 touchscreen and hotkeys not working KLonsdale
Cf-28 Mk 2 hotkeys not working ares93

CF-29 MK2 Hotkeys not working a few issues Note (Read members post) mochatough
CF-29 MK4 Perfect note: (use MK5 Hot key driver) TB2010

CF-29 MK5 Perfect TB2010
CF-29 MK5 Perfect (use xp Hotkeys drivers) Azrial

CF-30 MK1 Hot Keys not working TB2010
CF-30 MK1 Perfect Toughbook
CF-30 MK1 Perfect dale z

CF-30 MK2 Perfect Toyo
CF-30 MK3 Perfect Toyo

 

I would like to have input from Toughbook owners on W7 problems in this thread
I will edit this first post to list model and mk series then issues and then the member name
Collectively we can help each other resolve issues but each mk number in a series could need different drivers and problem resolution
It will be helpful to know ,who has what model and what items are not working and will serve as a reference to others considering upgrading to W7

 

CF-29 MK4 Windows 7 ultimate Must use MK5 Hot key driver. Everything seems fine.

CF-29 MK5 Windows 7 ultimate everything works great

CF-30 MK1 Windows 7 ultimate everything working but the Hot Keys

TB2010

 

Cf-28 Mk II Windows 7 Ultimate everything worked but touchscreen and hotkeys.

 

CF-19 MK2 everything working and after much fiddling fixed the hotkeys

My solution might work for some of ya'll. It seems the hotkeys are tied in to the video driver. Download the Vista Driver for MK2 from Panny and unpack it. Download and upgrade to the latest graphic driver for mobile windows 7 from intel and install. After installation reboot. go to device manager>display adapter and uninstall it. do not reboot. Browse to where the Panny driver unpacked, should be in the util>driver>video folder. right click on setup, select properties>compatibility tab and choose vista service pack 1. close tab and install driver.select yes to it telling you it is an older driver, reboot.
hotkeys should now work. for some reason if you try to install it by itself it won't work you have to upgrade and then downgrade. Maybe some of the newer files stay and help the old vista driver when it installs.
This also cures the mute button issue that Rob mentioned in another thread.

 

CF29N with no Touchscreen.

Everything works fine, had to install Hotkeys drivers intended for XP.

 

I now have a CF-30 MK1 with everything working!



Thanks for the "heads up" Rob!

 

Here's really dumb question: The Hot keys are the F# keys for volume and brightness ans such?

 

No problem, RICK! lol... Thank "Toughbook 2010" for that one!! He is an UBER GENIUS!! lol

~Rob, God forbid Rick takes FOREVER to answer his PM's!~

 

Correct ,the most used are Fn+F9 = battery condition and Fn +F1 or F2 for screen brightness

Last spring when I was testing W7 beta I had issues with hotkeys not working and I could not control the screen brightness on my cf74/cf19/cf30
I had to remove w7 as I did not want the screen at full brightness


Alex

 

CF-18 mk1 (early) - Works great when installed like this.

EDIT: That above issue has been resolved, and display rotation is now functional. See posts 32 & 33 later in this thread.


New functionality:
* Tablet PC Buttons - The three customizable Tablet PC buttons can now be assigned a "press and hold" action in addition to the existing "press and release" action that this model originally supported.

All things considered, not a bad trade-off from my perspective....


Matthew

 

I didn't have ANY issues installing my Hotkeys.... Perhaps the drivers need to be installed in order, ala live install of XP on the CF-18?

I installed the INF driver, then video, then sound, then hotkeys... Then I tried to install the touchscreen. When that failed I started installing the Panasonic stuff.... Handwriting, battery recalibration, DMI, etc.

If/when I have the time I will try to install it again all over again and see if I can get everything to go the first time but I think we need more testers as I have several builds coming up and won't have time for the next week or two.

I hope this helps....

 

CF-30MK3: Perfect

CF-30 MK2

Hot Keys for Screen +/- not working. It shows 100% when I try to adjust it, but it will not move or change the brightness. All the other keys work perfect. I know it was working before, do not remember what I did to change it up. being I don't use the MK2 very much anymore. It's so lonely....

Rick, you are 100% correct in regards to the order in which you install the drivers. I suggest everyone install them per Panny's W7 install instructions. The INF file is 1st no matter what!

 

Someone on here had W7 on a CF-27 300MHz that worked

 

CF-30 MK1 Windows 7 All is now working correct.

Touch Screen issue has been fixed.
Hotkeys working with out Hotkey settings and Hotkey appendix

Just Upgrade your bios to vista

TB2010

 

I'm wondering if upgrading my BIOS to Vista would solve the issue with having to recalibrate my touchscreen every time I turn it on?

 

Even though you pledged never to help me. I find my self better than that.

If you would like your CF-30 MK1 to work correctly all you need to do is update your bios to Vista. It unlocks some things that I have not had before. Puts a keyboard on the screen when you touch it Just to the left center. Use all vista drivers for windows 7 Ultimate Clean install. You will have to install the Hot key App to get the blue box to show up.

Windows loads most of the drivers. I use these as they are made for windows 7

Load Sound first ( Reboot )
Load Hot key driver ( Reboot )
Load Hot key App ( Reboot )
Install Touch Screen exe. (Reboot )
Install Misc. Driver exe. (Reboot )
Install Battery exe. ( Reboot )

Anyway All the Vista Drivers Work with windows 7
My guess is that if you update all toughbooks to vista bios it will fix your problems.

Hope it helps Many

TB2010

 

I updated to Vista BIOS and everything works EXCEPT the touchscreen.

None of the drivers work and I cannot calibrate... All the other drivers, hotkey, sound, etc... Carried over.

 

Rick I think you will have to do a clean install. When you update to vista bios it adds unknown devices to you computer. The misc driver is now installed through device manger now.

I'm going to reformat and reinstall just to check my findings

TB2010

 

CF-18 Mk4
Everything working except 3 tablet buttons.
Auto rotation works fine, I did a fresh install of Win7 Ultimate, and followed the instructions for the Vista upgrade on the panasonic global site under support.
Tere were 2 "unknown device" 's listed, the first was the tablet buttons, I can't remember what the other was!
Some of the "setup.exe" files may give an error when you run them, so you just right click and select compatibillity, then select "Vista" then run them again.


I do however wish that I could get the buttons to work, even though they are really not needed with Win7, It's built in Tablet support is fantastic!

Cheers,
Fraser

 

I have a CF-29 MK III. No touchscreen, which I do not care about, but NO sound either from the speaker or the headphone jack. No problem running sound with and external usb speaker. Microsoft support is going nuts trying to come up with a driver; I have fiddled with lots of them, but no sound. Any thoughts?

 

Do you have the speaker icon in the taskbar?

Try the hot key Fn + F4 to toggle sound on or off

I had a CF29 MK III with Win 7 ultimate, and i didn't have to intall the sound, windows did it with the first update.

The only issue was the graphic card

 

I am on getting W7 installed on my cf 28 tonight, i will let you know if it works.

 

My friend installed w7 last nite and he says hes having trouble with the graphics driver, it thinks it has found it and trys installing everytime he boots up!

Has anyone got a solution?

regards

 

I think you need to read through some posts. A CF-28 can be done but it depends on the model. Unless you want to strip everything useful out of W7... You'd need a 1GHz unit with 512MB RAM minimum.

When you post questions.... It is IMPORTANT that you give us the most info possible... regardless if you have already included it in another post.

So... What model (exactly) do you have? (CF-28XXXXXXX)

 

Sorry, its cf-28s3qgbdm.

Hes put xp on for now. just to get me going. Like i say it went on but was having trouble with the graphics driver.

 

CF-28S3QGBDM DESCRIPTION:
Pentium III 1GHz, 13.3" NON touch screen, 30GB, 256 MB RAM, 56K/LAN, FDD, Mobitex with Multiband antenna Win 2000

 

I don't have a reference on which graphics adapter is in that model, but it wouldn't surprise me if the encountered graphics driver issue is similar to that of a CF-18 mk1 with an Intel 82852/82855 GM/GME. Check the " HOWTO: Install Windows 7 on a CF-18 mk1" thread, which includes steps for working around some of the graphics driver issues.

 

I just installed XP on a Dull Inspiron 5000 with a 650Mhz CPU & 256MB RAM... I had to strip out just about everything on XP for it to work without having terrible lag.

I couldn't imagine loading W7 on a CF-28..... Boot now... Use next week when it finishes booting!

 

I just loaded W7 on an HP dv5 for a friend and ran into an unusual problem that if anyone else does here is what to look for...The install went smoothly and I went to do the reboot and that is when it started. I would get the login screen, put in the password and when the screen reappeared...NO DESKTOP OR START MENU! All I would get is a black screen with a white cursor. I went online with my computer and found numerous articles and they all referenced explorer.exe problems, specifically it would not load. If you went into the task manager and put in explorer.exe it would start and everything worked/looked normal. To make an even longer story short, I tried every fix I could find and nothing changed. I updated W7 and all the HP drivers and as long as I started manually, it would work. But reboot and still the same. Somewhere along the line I remembered someone mentioned a virus in that program so I ran Malwarebytes and AVG complete scans. Lo and behold, six Trojans with one in explorer.exe! After the scan I rebooted and now it works perfectly! (BTW, this was an upgrade install over Vista, not a clean install).

 

Moral to this story: ALWAYS keep an anti-virus program running if you ever "surf the net". It's your computer's "condum" against infection.

ADDENDUM

And while on the subject of anti-virus programs, what programs are Forum members using and how happy are they with their program's performance?

I use Norton Anti-Virus and it seems to work well at blocking viruses, adware, etc.

 

Many thanks, will give it a whirl in the nxt couple of weeks.

 

Update to the status of the CF-18 mk1: Automatic display rotation is now functional. New user slammer111's post on installing the Panasonic Misc driver provided the missing link in a multi-sequence process that enables this functionality.

 

CF-18 Mk 2.Digitizer

Following carefully RCX's instructions for the Mk 1, has all features working as they did with XP.

Read the problems I encountered in
http://forum.notebookreview.com/panasonic/418424-howto-install-windows-7-cf-18-mk1.html

 

In regards to what type of A/V software people are using, i have been using Microsoft Security Essentials. It's kinda wierd though
I have never had it show where it has caught anything malicious in over 2 years. However, in the last 2 years I have had no infections at all. Which is a 1st. The program is light, easy, and very unobtrusive. If you have not tried it your missing out. The best part is that it's free!

i have tried almost all the other major players. Alot of false positives for sure with most of them. It just gets annoying, with MSE it's practically invisible.

Forgot one thing, I think Tomcat expressed this. The Hotkey programs are without question tied into the video driver. On my 30MK2 it's very picky. I am using the original video driver that came with it on Vista. I can't tell a difference between that one and a newer version at all. The 30MK3 is much more user friendly in regards to what version's I put in it.

 

Toughbook CF-29ETKGZKM yeah I said a CF-29 mk2 with w7 AND a touchscreen working. Used the touchscreen driver from the panasonic website for the windows sp2 driver. Used the guide put out on by capt.dogfish to get the correct driver working.
Next task is the Fn key functions to work.
To get windows 7 working I installed the hdd into another laptop that had a dvd drive on it. I couldnt find a 1gb ddr module so I settled for a 512 giving me a useable total of 759mb of ram. Its kidna slow but good enough to run the stuff that Im doing. Drivers for the display are working but I KNOW something else could be better for the display.

 

Thanks for the post mochatough
I have added you to the list
There may be a few that have tried W7 that can comment on the video drivers and hotkeys on the MK-2
TB2010 with the mk-4 used mk-5 hotkey drivers

 

I've been running the 'Free' Avast. Also a scan from Spybot and Malware Bytes to keep things tidy. JohnP

 

Hello
I am looking for Panny's install instruction for 30mk2 and w7.. I am having the same problem and I have looked but must have over looked it.

thanks

Dale

 

I can check to see what works on my mk2 tonite
As I remeber brightness works pefect
It was a long time ago that I loaded W7

Can you give detail on you instalation steps
Is screen brightness the only issue

 

Thanks..
I am also working on a cf-28SUJ23DM (with 512ram) and I have loaded W7 on it and it has the video driver problem that i read about a few post up.
Was that the fix?? Thanks

Dale

 

29 MK3 had to pick and choose between Mk 3 XP and I believe Mk 4-5 Vista. Hot keys was Vista and rest was Mk3 XP. With 1.5 ram, video is weird at times. Haven't tried readyboost via USB.

 

Please stick with xp on the cf-28 models

The total ram size limitation excludes them for W7 or Vista
They will be very slow as the hard dive will be constantly accessed to make up for ram limitations

Mod's were acomplished here on the newer cf-29 series to get 2GB and higher total ram to allow for decent W7 performance

 

cf29 mk3 - video drivers

 

It's the cf-29 mk-4 or mk-5 with 256mb ram on-board , the normal 512mb models will not upgrade

Read this thread
http://forum.notebookreview.com/panasonic/451104-everyone-told-me-not-do.html

 

Yes the the CF-30MK2 (30FAS89AM) is running everything ok but the F1 & F2 will not work.
I have to get this one working because I have 75 more to retro to W7. Plus I have all the CF-29's I am selling on flee bay.. I am loving my work because I get paid to work all day long on toughbooks....
Sorry I ranting and with out beer...

Dale

 

Make sure you are using the video driver from the Panny site, not the version on Intel's site. Also, you gotta follow all the Hotkey Drivers in the correct order.

The Intel drivers will work. Just not allow all the other things to work properly, even coming in and out of sleep mode gets affected by them. Heck, they even tied the Sound driver into some programs that you would not usually think would be.

If you ever find a driver install list and it is in alphabetical order, don't use it. Find the one that has the proper order.

 

TC cut his thought short here.

Continuing: "...with the 2GB DDR SODIMM; it will handle the 1GB just fine."

Work for you, TC?

 

Where do I find the Panny site? and doe it have the correct order for install??

Thanks
Dale