Windows 7 on a CF-74 MK2

Hey everyone!
First off, thank you for providing such a wealth of knowledge and expertise. I've been lurking for a week or so and am amazed at just how intimate some of you are with these toughbooks!

I purchased 5 of Toughbooks at a Government Surplus Auction a week ago for $160 total. They had no hard drives and no power supplies, but I purchased those and am trying to get them all running W7(preferably).

The first one I began working on is a CF74ECBADBM. W7 loaded fine, even the touchscreen driver installed after a few updates.

Nothing has a (!) next to it in Device Manager, but the Tablet settings aren't present in Control Panel. No big deal, I used the search feature and found the Tablet PC Settings pane, but it says 'No Pen or Touch Input is available for this Display'.

The driver is installed, listed as 'Fujitsu Touch Panel (USB)' in the Human Interface Device tab.(Version 1.9.4.5, tried updating but says existing is most recent)

C:/util2/drivers/tscreen/calwin runs, but tapping the screen does nothing.

Start>Accessories>Tablet PC>Windows Journal and Tablet PC Input Panel do nothing as well.

I'm at a loss. Any help?

Also of note, the sound driver is installed, but nothing from the speakers. There was an 'I Am Legend' DVD in the drive when i popped it open, so I'm assuming they work. Headphones get no sound either so (assuming) it's a driver problem.

One of the other units I've tried powering up lets me get to BIOS but is password locked.
That unit is a CF74 but has NO barcode or serial number listed. Thinking of loading the initial W7 files using the first Toughbook, then during the restart switching to the second un-named unit to let it finish. Worked with a VAIO i played with a while back.

Thanks in advance!
Andrew

 

Welcome to the Panasonic Toughbook forum

First off we can not talk about the one with the locked BIOS..forum rules. It does not surprise me that the touchscreens don't work. Three out of the four I got were dead too. Did you install the Hot key drivers (3) and the Panasonic misc driver ??

 

That is very unfortunate. It doesn't seem logical, as I paid for it and it is legally my property now. Working around and repairing something that was put in place by the previous owner seems like the very reason we have these forums. But I am a newcomer here and will absolutely abide by the forum rules

I have not installed any drivers manually just yet. Holding the function key and pressing the screen brightness up/down keys work, but no volume or anything else. I will try that first thing tomorrow and report back.

Thank you for the prompt reply!

 

Yes... You need to manually load all the drivers and go from there. You should also set up an email account with your membership here. You need 5 posts to PM back and forth but I think emailing is not an issue.

 

a point of clarification ...
is there a sequence to loading three "primary" drivers/programs (before anything else) such as with the CF-30 ?
i.e : panasonic misc driver / panasonic common components and finally hotkey appendix-hotkey driver .

 

a sequence... Yes... Video driver... Then hotkey driver... Then both Hotkey Appendix and Settings drivers. Other than that, load whatever you want any time you want. Just load them all.

 

Just did some checking on your CF-74E. If you are going to install W7 on them then my guess you will need to do the Vista upgrade as we all had to do on the CF-30MK1. When you go here Panasonic Toughbook Computer Support Downloads and pick your model, under operating system pick "Vista Upgrade" and use all these drivers. If the 74 is like the CF-30MK1 then you need to upgrade to the Vista BIOS before the touchscreen will work.

 

I do understand what you are saying...I just wanted you to know the rules before you asked the HOW TO question . That's about the only thing we can't talk about.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/pan...reading-anyone-who-posts-panasonic-forum.html

 

Yep, I had the same problems loading up a Mk1, you will need to update the bios via a floppy USB drive. Even though the bios was locked it let me update it, it's designed to keep it locked even after updating it.

On your locked one it is most likely the same thing. You can load up one of those other units and swap the caddy over to make sure it works. I would use a older hard drive you don't care about first. On a older CF-51Mk3 that had a locked bios the hard drive was also locked to the bios. Inserting a new hard drive locked the hard drive too making it un-usable on another pc. Most are not set up like that though. (that was another forum member a while back) Also once you are up and running windows on that machine there is software that will let you see what your model number is and your bios revision # though windows so that way you will know what you have.

 

Thanks for that link! For some reason it only gave my the XP SP2 OS everytime I've tried searching for drivers there lol.

Is that the only option for updating the BIOS, via floppy? CD isn't an option?

When I tried running the Video Driver (in XP SP2 Compatibility Mode) it said that I had a version newer than the driver I was attempting to install, and asked to overwrite it. I cancelled for now.

Thank you all so much for all of the info.
Sorry for the delays in updating, real life has been hectic.

 

Does anybody have an idea?

 

Stick a bootable cd in the drive and see if the cf74 boots from it..
If it does, then go ahead and create a DOS boot cd with the bios flash files on it.

Need to uninstall the existing video driver, then install the official Panasonic one......Don't let Windows update the driver..

 

The BIOS upgrade is the one available in the link posted earlier, correct? It booted from CD so I'll give that a try.
Will downgrade video driver as well. Does that apply to all drivers, if they ask to downgrade or only video?

 

Uninstall sound, touchpad and touchscreen drivers and install the official ones also..

Too bad you can't check in the bios and see that the touchscreen is set to auto...or tablet..prefer auto..
If it's set to touchscreen in the bios, the touchscreen will not work in win7...Ask Toughbook (Rick) He just had the same problem earlier this week.
Luckily his bios was unlocked, so he changed the setting and it now works great..

Shawn

 

Actually, this particular machine allows me to access BIOS just fine I was just reading up on that exact possibility. I am rebooting to verify that it isn't disabled, then will start on drivers. Thank you.

 

Another clue is the single Fujitsu entry in control panel. Means bios is set to touch. Two hid entries would equal tablet. FWIW

Good luck.

 

The BIOS version is V2.00L10. The only option for touch is under the MAIN tab, and it says 'Touch Pad: [Enable]'. So I'm assuming that's not the issue.

 

Info..

Model Number:CF-74ECBADBM
Status DISCONTINUED
MSRP:$3,443
Description: Intel Core Duo T2500 2.0GHz (Centrino), 13.3" XGA Touch, 80GB, 512MB, Intel 802.11a/b/g, DVD/CDRW, WIN XP SP2, Bluetooth

You have the XP bios, you will need the Vista bios. Read linked document for upgrading to Vista.....It will apply to Win7 also.

http://pc-dl.panasonic.co.jp/dl/download/file/011463/s/a34ba183d1da59a8/Windows_Vista_Upgrade_Step-by-Step_Guide(CF-74mk1_2)_ver2.pdf


Go hto the following link when you choose the Operating system, CHOOSE VISTA upgrade. Click and read the whole document...The link for the bios is there.

http://www.panasonic.com/business/toughbook/computer-support-search-downloads.asp


Direct link to bios file..

http://pc-dl.panasonic.co.jp/dl/download/file/011463/s/6ba608871e30fe53/bios_74_2_r060257.exe

 

Make sure your screen is set to Tablet and NOT Touchscreen in the BIOS. Sounds weird but it works. Otherwise you won't be able to load the Touchscreen driver.

 

So I execute and it asks me to select a destination. Default is C;\upbios.

EDIT. I let it go to the c:\upbios and it presented as list of files. Clicked on MKBUPDFD and it only wants to write to the A drive. Any way around this? Possibly renaming my D drive to A? -nope. 'does not support 1.44mb formatting'

I was able to mount a virtual floppy on the toughbook, create a blank image file in it, extract the MKBUPDFD.exe to the VFD, but it shows up as an empty image file still even after I wrote to it.

My process was as follows:
Start VFD, mount A; drive, create new image, RAW 1.44mb, format it(all virtual).
Close program, because it interferes with the MKBUPDFD.exe.
Start MKBUPDFD.exe, click okay twice and it says disk created successfully.
Close MKBUPDFD.exe.
Reopen VFD, save image, it lets me choose file and the file typ association is only listed as "." so I type biosupdate.iso and VOILA! it saves as a .iso file.
Created bootable flash drive with Rufus(same way I installed Win7) and when I boot the toughbook with the now 'bootable' flash drive, I get a special character form of the letter o and a blinking cursor.
Guessing that the .MKBUPDFD.exe isn't actually writing anything to the VFD, or that I'm doing something wrong (likely) and ending up with an empty file. Help?

 

Alright, done playing with it. Any external USB Floppy drive will work, correct? So I can grab one of those cheapo $15 from newegg, a pack of floppies, and call it a day?

 

The original one was a Panasonic branded Teac. I have a few put up. I haven't tried any other one to know if it will work.

 

The one I picked up from Newegg ended up being a Teac as well, and worked perfectly. WIll be installing drivers over the next few minutes and will update from there.

 

Quick update and possibly final before I throw this thing into a vice and get out the chainsaw;
Video driver installed, but the IntelVGA.js file resulted in an error, both in normal compatibility and run as Windows XP SP2.
Then I extracted the Hotkey driver, and the hkeymann setup file doesn't do anything, in either compatibility mode.
Then, Hotkey Appendix worked out, made me restart, so I did. Hotkey Settings worked as well, then I moved on to the TScreen driver. Extracted (in compatibility mode for XP SP2) and when I tried running ftsetup.exe, it told me The functionality required by this software is not supported on your system", both via normal and XP SP2 compatibility mode.
Any ideas?

 

Windows® 7 Support and Upgrade Information | TOUGHBOOK | TOUGHPAD | Panasonic Global Notebook PC

That page is for the windows 7 upgrade drivers for the Mk4. The misc driver, hot key, etc will for for you mk 2. A newer touchscreen driver. Extract it, and install though device manager. It will automatically add the calibration for your touch screen icon in control panel.

 

Thank you! Trying that out now.

 

Misc and Tscreen drivers say 'This model does NOT support'

 

Hotkey driver worked, had to run as admin.
Ftsetup hangs no matter what I do and windows tells me it has stopped working.
EDIT: Uninstalling the touch panel driver allows ftsetup to run, but it tells me the same thing as before.
Misc drivers says 'MAT0021' not found or something similar. Goes by too quick for me to read. Stuck again, any ideas?
Thanks again for all of the help.

 

You have to extract them with 7 zip or win RAR. 7 zip is free. Once installed just right click it and extract to folder. 7-Zip

 

Right, but the application downloaded from the Panasonic site automatically extracts, correct? Or is there another file I have to unzip?
I get to the files within TScreen and all of those, but when I try to run FTSetup it either hangs or says 'Machine does NOT support'.

 

Yes it will automatically extract, UNLESS it sees it's the wrong model. Then it will give you the "model does not support" message. That's why you got to extract it with a third party application.

 

Ah, makes sense. Extracting now. Stuck at 96% with a Warning: There are some data after the payload data. Will let it sit for a bit.

 

Just bypass the Panasonic application that extracts the files. Once you have extracted them with 7 zip just install though Device manager. I have used other 7 drivers also from other models to older models. Like Misc and hotkey drivers from Mk3 CF-19 to a CF-50 Mk4 and CF-51 Mk3.

 

Did that, 7zip is giving me the warning. WIll re-download the file and try again with 7zip. As of now it won't budge past 96% and is still showing that warning.

 

I have very rarely had a warning unless the file was bad with 7zip.

 

Touchscreen file stops at 96%, Hotkey stops at 99%. If it wasn't bad luck, I'd have none at all.

 

It extracts 13 files, which appear to be complete. The when running TPSetUp, it allows me to click yes to begin installation, but then says the installation isn't complete.

 

Try though device manager only, not the extracted exe.

 

Turns out the Beta version of 7zip is what I ended up installing by accident. Went with stable build and it extracted all the files without batting an eyelash.
TPSetUp still says installation isn't complete.
Tried pointing device manager to the tscreen folder on my desktop, it says best driver is already installed for my device (which is USB Input Device)

 

So I was finally able to update driver software>let me choose from a list>have disk>point to tscreen folder, it wanted a .inf file so the only thing it saw was fidtpu, so I selected that. After a few minutes, it installed successfully and now the device show up as FCL USB Pen Tablet(Sus), but it still doesn't show up in Pen and Touch settings, and doesn't react to the pen whatsoever.

Following a link in another thread led me to the fujitsu driver download page, where I snagged the USB version of FCL USB Pen Tablet, which installed and now it shows up in device manager as USB not (Sus).

Done for the night. Thanks again for the help, but will pick up again tomorrow to try to get it working again.

It seems as though I've got a driver installed, but Windows has no idea it's there.
No control panel touch settings, calibration utility does nothing, pen and touch setting say 'no touch input is available for this display'.
I've tried running the video driver setup you gave me from the Windows 7 Upgrade link, but it says 'This system does not meet the minimum system requirements" and closes.

Is there a way to verify that it isn't hardware that's the problem? Not afraid to strip it down to tiny screws and mobo p0rn.

 

I have never tried that beta version of 7 zip, guess I should of said the stable version. The video driver won't work with that one as it's for a 4500 intel video, you have 945 intel video in that Mk2.

If you have a linux live dvd/cd handy of ubuntu or mint throw that in there and see if the touch is working then. If not it may be a dead touch screen.

 

Can I see a screenshot of device manager with hid expanded? Be advised that the unit needs to be set to tablet mode in bios FOR W7.
If hid shows two USB devices it's tablet (in bios).
If one Fujitsu device it's touchscreen (in bios)
Just because the devices show up does not indicate the touch panel is working. That mark can easily have a de-laminated panel.
Now I'll read the earlier part of the thread.

hid = Human Interface Device.