Win7 Ultimate 7600 on LE1600 -- experiences

[laalaa99stl]

Long time lurker, first post. Thought I'd share with you my experience installing release version of Win7 Ultimate 32-bit on my LE1600VA. I chose 32-bit since max RAM on this machine is 2GB. I chose Ultimate because the LE1600 ships with a TPM chip and is thus ideally suited for bitlocker use. I haven't tried this feature yet, but appreciate having the option to do so.

A few pre-installation notes: I upgraded my machine to the max 2GB SODIMM. Win7 is aware of all 2.5GB but acknowledges that only 2GB of it is usable. I upgraded the hard drive to a 120GB Hitachi. To my knowledge (gleaned from this forum) there is only one drive bigger than this that is known to work -- a rare and expensive 160GB Samsung. The dual-platter 240GB Hitachi has been reported here as not being compatible with the LE1600. The 30gb Hitachi I replaced is now housed in a 1.8" external enclosure acquired inexpensively from ebay. However, the tablet won't usb-boot from it.

I left my BIOS at A9. To my knowledge, the only thing the A12 BIOS gives you is an increase in VRAM from 64MB to ??MB. However, monitoring my VRAM usage choosing Graphics Properties... --> Information from the Desktop shows it to be a constant 7MB regardless of how many things I am doing. Even if this is a wildly inaccurate way to gauge VRAM usage, my tablet will primarily be used for 2D art, photo retouching, and note-taking; and not video-editting or 3D rendering/gaming, so I don't believe the A12 upgrade is worthwhile. If you disagree with this assessment, you should upgrade your BIOS BEFORE installing Win7. The Winphlash program is NOT Win7 compatible -- even disabling UAC, running as admin or using "compatibility mode" chicanery.

I performed no special partitioning incantations before installing. I simply let MS's installer handle all the details setting up my disk as one large partition. After the installer does its thing, I think the right strategy is to allow Windows Update to install as much as it can recognize, then fill in missing devices using drivers from MC's Vista support site. Use XP drivers as a last resort.

www motioncomputing com/support/driver_download_1600_vista.asp

The information on MC's site is incorrect for the audio drivers. It will NOT get picked up by WU. You will need to use the XP drivers:

www motioncomputing com/support/driver_download_1600.asp

Thankfully, the ethernet interface was recognized OOB by Win7. Otherwise I might have been far worse off. Windows Update, of course, requires an internet connection... which leads me to the first of the handful of problems I had to solve with my install. Hopefully I can spare you some trouble:

1) Atheros Wifi not working OOB. The Vista drivers available from MC did not work with my Atheros AR5004X mini-PCI wireless card and Windows update did not automatically detect it. I had to obtain drivers from:

Atheros AR50XX Wireless Windows 7 Driver v.8.0.0.219

www x-drivers com/catalog/drivers/wireless_networks/companies/atheros/models/ar5004x/13510.html

However, I couldn' get the driver to recognize my card until I manually entered a new entry into the netathr.inf file. Specifically, I added this line:

%ATHR.DeviceDesc.1042% = ATHR_DEV_OS61_1042.ndi, PCI\VEN_168C&DEV_0013&SUBSYS_7005168C

under the section marked:
;
; OS 6.1 Manufacturer section
; [Atheros.NTX86.6.1]
; DisplayName Section DeviceID
; ----------- ------- --------
;legacy HW Entries

If you wanted to install it under Vista, you would add the same line to the Vista section. If you feel like you need the Atheros Client Utlity (you really don't), you can get it from the older driver package:

Atheros AR50XX Wireless Windows 7 Driver v.8.0.0.196

www x-drivers com/catalog/drivers/wireless_networks/companies/atheros/models/ar5004x/13141.html

but I see now that an even newer version was just released 6 days ago that apparently includes both the latest driver and utility:

Atheros AR50XX Wireless Windows 7 Driver v.8.0.0.238

www x-drivers com/catalog/drivers/wireless_networks/companies/atheros/models/ar5001x/13946.html

perhaps it doesn't require my inf hacking.

2) Suspend crashed the machine.

This appears to be a common problem. The cause is almost always the chipset driver. So I opened my device manager and uninstalled all the entries under Display adapters, then let Windows Update install a newer driver. My laptop is now snoozing happily. If you are unable to solve the problem this way, your only recourse is to choose hibernate instead of sleep.

3) Waking up from hibernation rendered the convertible hardware keyboard nonfunctional. This problem went away all by itself after a few days. I have no explantion for it. None

4) Pixarra Twisted Brush crashes when trying to export an image. But the exported image is fine. So only export images at the end of your work session, I guess

Last, but not least -- the thing that everyone cares about: pressure sensitivity!

5) Pressure sensitivity does not work OOB in PS10/CS3, PS11/CS4, Paintbrush Pro, Corel Painter 11, Corel SketchPad, and Gimp It DOES work in ArtRage 2.5 and Alias Sketchbook Pro. HOWEVER, you can install the latest Wacom consumer tablet driver from their website. Take careful note that this is driver version 5.20-7a. Their TabletPC driver is still at 5.05-7 (I tried this one as well and didn't fare better).

www wacom com/downloads/driver-detail.php?id=198

And... pressure sensitivity is RESTORED to the above programs!! Now the heartbreak: the Wacom driver breaks pressure sensitiviy in ArtRage 2.5 and Sketchbook Pro

Also. Inkball does not work with the Wacom driver installed. The Inkball game is actually NOT included in any Win7 distro, so you will have to bring it over from your previous install. It actually seemed to work just fine before I installed the Wacom drivers and its functionality was restored as soon as I removed the Wacom drivers again. The same is true for the other graphics programs whose pressure sensitivity broke with the installation of the Wacom drivers. Their sensitivity was restored after nuking the Wacom drivers.

Having to choose between Sketchbook and ArtRage (and InkBall) vs PS/TBP/CP is absolutely traumatic for me. The solutions are

1) wait for Wacom to address the problem
2) wait for MS to address the problem
3) wait for individual software vendors to address the problem
4) watch 1)-3) point fingers at eachother in a nice circle
5) run screaming back to XP
6) run VMware
7) keep installing and uninstalling the wacom drivers as required

None of these options sounds especially attractive. I will continue to try and troubleshoot this, but would welcome any thoughts and experiences the rest of you have had.

So... leaving aside the primary reason for my having this tablet, my initial impressions are that Win7 feels quick and responsive. Without a stopwatch, I can state that at the very least, it does not feel any slower than XP. I can't really address inking recognition reliability since that is a feature I used sparingly under XP. Tentatively I will say that it is no worse than before.

Bluetooth works, but badly. I literally have to keep the paired device touching my tablet for it to stay connected. I'm wondering at this point if this is a hardware rather than software problem.

Of course, aero does not work. Even if you try and "hack" it. This was already discussed during the Vista years; The chipset is simply lacking the necessary features for it. But you don't need aero anyway. No really, you don't.

I've also installed 32GB SD and CF flash cards (Chinese generics from ebay). The CF card works reasonably well though it's no speed demon. The 32GB SDHC reads fine but does not write reliably. In fact, writing to it essentially guarantees corrupting the entire card, requiring a reformat. My solution is to use the write protect tab. So together with the hard drive upgrade I have 120 + 32 + 32 = 184GB of available storage -- just about survivable.

Ok, well I've used up enough of your time. Thanks for reading, and I hope you find a few useful tidbits in there. An extra-special noprize to anyone who can solve the pressure sensitivity conundrum!

[laalaa99stl]

UPDATE: I just figured out that PS10/CS3 (but NOT PS11/CS4), Gimp, and the Corel products, SketchPad and Painter WILL recognize pressure sensitivity simply by installing either the TabletPC or consumer tablet drivers WITHOUT a restart AND this leaves ArtRage and Sketchbook Pro still sensitive as well! But the trick is not reversible. i.e. you can't immediately uninstall the Wacom driver without a restart expecting to get CS4, Twisted Brush, and InkBall working again. But I think I can live with this until a real solution arrives!

Messing around with the Pen and Touch or Pen Tablet Properties control panels did not achieve anything worth noting. But don't let that stop you from trying

On an unrelated note, I forgot to mention that the Authentec drivers work just fine for the thumbprint reader However, there is no longer support for using it as a scrollbar while surfing. No great loss. This feature never worked consistently for me in XP anyway.

[fras]

Hi,
about 2 weeks ago I installed W. seven.
I can't correct an issue, that the computer hangs when i shut down the system.
I try to disable drivers of the display, etc but no solution.
Any help?

Thanks