Installing Vista on the HP tc1100

I mentioned in another post that I had performed a clean install of Vista Ultimate on the HP tc1100 and given it to my wife.  She is quite happily using it and everything in Vista is working perfectly and quite snappily.  Granted, you don't get the eye candy stuff like Aero Glass or the fancy Flip 3D and the like because it has the 915 graphics chipset that is forever banished from fully running Vista.  It doesn't matter to my wife and to tell you the truth I have all of that turned off on the Fujitsu P1610 anyway for better performance.  A number of you have contacted me to find out what is required to install Vista on the tc1100 so I thought I'd outline the process here.  It's a lot easier than you think.

First of all, if at all possible wipe the tc1100 clean and install fresh, that way you won't have any questions about the process in the event something doesn't work.  Install Vista on the tc1100 and if possible connect it to your network via a wired ethernet since the wireless won't be working yet.  With a good network connection do a Windows Update after the install and all hardware drivers will download and install.  I didn't have to install any drivers manually and once the Update completed everything worked with the exception of the Q Menu utility and the buttons on the slate.  Never fear, these are easily installed.  Download and install the latest version of both of these items from the tc1100 support site. Install the Button Driver first followed by the Q Menu.  Make sure when you install them you run them as Administrator and in Windows XP compatibility mode via the right-click menu.  If you get a weird error message running Q Menu just install it again, for some reason it doesn't always take the first time.

That's it, your tc1100 should be fully Vistamized, although as I write this I realize I never tested the SD slot.  If yours doesn't work you should install the driver for that from the HP site too.  Happy slating!

Comments

[Geert Schoots]

James, I didn't realize this at first too but running Aero Glass actually makes your machine faster since your videocard renders the desktop, if you turn this off your CPU has to do it so the fancy GUI is actually faster, if it is supported of course.

[Z]

The SD slot will not work in VISTA. If a card is in the slot VISTA will not boot. If a card is inserted, VISTA will come to a screeching halt.

Here is a detailed description of the process. It's in Canadian, so you might need a translator... ;-)

http://mobilepcwiki.com/mpc/index.php?title=HP/TC1100/Windows_Vista_Installation_Notes

My TC1100 is working well under VISTA, I'm just awaited our corporate VPN and virus scanner updates so I can shut down my XP partition...

[Steve S]

James: Vista on the TC1100 has been written about extensively on GBM. In particular, WNewquay has written an excellent entry about it in the Tablet Wikipedia. See the HP forum at GBM for the discussion thread and the Wiki URL...

[Mickey Segal]

How does the 915 chipset do at running external monitors? I haven't gotten this to work properly as detailed at
http://mobilepcwiki.com/mpc/index.php?title=Motion/LS800/Windows_Vista_Clean_Install_Notes

[DarrenS]

Thanks for posting all this info ... I am going to do it this weekend!! Right now I am looking for some sort of imaging software to backup my Windows TabletPC 2005 install. I think Matt Miller mentioned he uses Acronis. Which is the best solution?

[Matt]

@Geert Schoots

Every video card these days does 2D acceleration for rendering graphics in normal windows mode. If you boot to safe mode, you'll notice a decrease in GUI response, and that is because the graphics are handled by the OS and not by the video card when in that mode.

So, your CPU does not have to "do it" when Aero turned off. Aero actually makes your machine run slower because it takes up over 300MB of RAM.

[James Kendrick]

Mickey, I haven't tried an external monitor with it under Vista yet, but I will.

[James Kendrick]

DarrenS, I use Acronis and it works very well.

[Andrew Forde]

In terms of turning Aero off what do you really mean? I'm looking at ways to speed up my P1610 running Vista Business and I want to try some of what is being suggested.

So far I have turned the transparancies off to see how that goes. But what do I need to do to try to reduce the 300mb mentioned by Matt? Change the theme to a more basic one? Turn off more options?

Any help is appreciated.

[James Kendrick]

Andrew,

Just right-click on the desktop, choose themes and select Vista Basic. It will turn off all the other stuff.

[Andrew Forde]

Thanks James - got it now. The extra graphics of Aero are very nice but as my P1610 is a business and work device I need it to simply run the best it can.

However I still want it to look like Vista so I'll give the Basic theme a try.

I know this is taking over the thread a little but has anyone got any other ideas to help reduce some of the system load with Vista... other than going back to XP!! :)

[Andrew Forde]

A quick update from me regarding my P1610 now running Vista Basic. WOW!! What a difference this has made. Yes I've lost some of the eye candy, that's a same as I love things like the preview mode (I'll have to see if I can turn that on). But everything, and I mean everything, seems to be running so much faster and smoother.

Battery life is also reporting approximately 6 hours with wifi and bluetooth on via the side switch. That's more than I had with Aero running, probably as everything was working harder to make the eye candy work.

This is a good move for me on my 'Baby-P' laptop. I can live without Aero if this is the benefit.

[Matt]

You can also turn off all indexing. got to indexing options in the control panel and remove all the folders. Also, do not install the desktop search component that Office 2007 wants you to install. it never shuts down, even on battery.

[Mau]

Hi everyone.
I installed Vista on my TC1100 as well.
Quite everything works fine, except my battery-time.
It runs about 3 hours with all settings at minimum and the fan is always on.
Anyone here who has the same probs and perhaps an advice for me?

I would keep Vista On it, but with this poor running time I probably switch back to XP.