Don't blame me if you blow up your ProGear. Don’t blame me if you’re not using legitimate software and you have a problem. Don’t blame me if you don’t follow the steps exactly and something goes wrong. Don’t blame me if you do follow the steps and it still doesn’t work for you. Just don’t blame me for anything… I’m trying to help!

Introductory Notes

The purpose of this document was originally to provide a detailed step-by-step process on installing Windows XP on a Sonic|Blue ProGear web pad to make it into a full-blown – if somewhat slow – MicroSloth computer. That purpose has changed a bit.

Since the process of moving from the Linux system to a M$ system involves opening the ProGear and removing the hard-drive and such, this document serves as a step-by-step process for that as well – hopefully making it more comfortable for those concerned about it to consider this process for whatever reason.

Since many users considered moving from Linux to Windows 98, instead of XP – some don’t want to pay for an XP license and have 98 licenses “lying around”, others don’t believe that it could possibly be as fast as Windows 98 (it is) – so this document can be used for that purpose as well.

Since there were a number of questions regarding performance on Windows XP, there is a section of this document that covers all levels of “tweaking” XP – from mild to wild. These are usable on any XP system, making this a doc for XP tweaking, too.

Finally, some of what I consider to be the most “Frequently Asked Questions” on the ProGear user group have been added, with answers by various authors.

Enjoy!

Setting up Windows XP on the Sonic|Blue ProGear

Advice

Don't try this unless you have at least 128M RAM. Read the “Requirements” carefully and make sure you are equipped and understand them thoroughly before proceeding. Read the pertinent instructions for your environment and make sure you’re pretty comfortable with them before proceeding. If you’re not comfortable, ask questions before you proceed, not after you’re sitting with a $600 paper weight and don’t have the necessary tools to get back on track to having a working computer.

Requirements

1- Windows XP Home or Professional installation disk (or the i386 directory, at least). Of course, you must have a legitimate license to use this software, as well. If you have an upgrade version (not a "full" version) of XP, you will also need original install disks from another version of Windows. (Important: see “Notes for Windows XP Upgrade version” if applicable before proceeding.) Alternatively, you can install Windows 98 with these instructions by replacing all the references to “the i386 directory” with what is typically referred to as “cabs” from Windows 98 – meaning all the install files. You will run “setup.exe” instead of “winnt” when that time comes.

2- You must have a USB keyboard which will work with the ProGear in native mode. If you can hit "F2" while the ProGear is booting and access the BIOS settings, that keyboard should work fine. I recommend a Microsoft keyboard, as they seem to work best. If you have troubles with your keyboard at some point, there are a couple of posts on how to get around them.

3- If you have an LX or HX unit, a USB floppy drive which works for booting to a floppy disk would be a great way to do this… however, as of this writing, no such “compatible” bootable USB floppy – or other bootable USB device – has been found that has been shared with the ProGear community; if you find one that works, please be sure to let everyone know what it was. Assuming that there are still no bootable USB devices discovered, to move from an LX or HX (Linux-based) ProGear to a Windows-based system, you will need to remove the hard-drive. See this section for instructions on removing the hard-drive. While a bootable USB device might be a good thing to have with the Win98 units, it is not necessary if all the steps are followed and everything goes as it should; if you have trouble, worst case, you will resort to removing the hard-drive and putting it into a desk-top system.

4- A program for repartitioning drives. I'm writing this based on using PQ Magic, as I know it works. Yes, you could use anything you want… I’m just not writing instructions for using all of them. If you’re not comfortable with this sort of program, you probably should think twice about doing this.

5- I recommend having a program for "imaging" your drive / partition, such as Ghost. I'm writing this based on using Ghost, as I know the recent versions work for this purpose.

6- If you have an HX/LX unit, you’ll need to remove the hard-drive and install it into a desk-top system (or removable notebook drive enclosure – this works well, I’ve found) to be able to get the necessary data on to the drive. See HX/LX section.

Notes for Windows XP Upgrade version

If you have a Windows XP upgrade version (not the “full” version), you will need to prove that you own a previous version of Windows in order to complete the installation. The easiest way to do this – while still doing a “clean” installation, not an actual “upgrade of Windows 98 to Windows XP” – is to have the old Windows disks to “prove” to the Windows XP upgrade installation program that you own the previous version.

I haven't tried this with XP, but it worked with all the older "upgrade" versions of Windows: you may be able to get around the upgrade issue by putting a copy of the installation disk(s) from a previous version on the D: drive as well as the Windows XP installation files. At the appropriate point (there’s a note to see the “Notes for Windows XP Upgrade version” at the appropriate point), also copy the installation disk(s) or the old “C:\Windows\Options\Cabs” folder to the D: drive along with the Windows XP I386 directory. If you have an upgrade version, be sure that you get this accomplished before proceeding past that point.

We’re ready to go. Proceed to the “Preliminary steps”!

Preliminary steps (one set for SE, another set for HX/LX)

With "SE" unit (Windows98 based)

This process is based on keeping the ProGear “intact”; you do not need to remove the hard-drive, but we will still be able to do a “fresh install”, not an “upgrade” (Since, in my experience, doing on “operating system upgrade” results in a very screwed up system).

With Windows98 systems, DOS is still the underlying "operating system". As such, you can boot to DOS by hitting F8 while the unit is booting up (just after the BIOS status screen) then choose "Command Prompt". This will put you at a C:\ DOS prompt and will serve for the steps to come.

Make sure you have wireless LAN working and can attach to some other computer system which has the Windows XP installation disk or the I386 directory of that installation disk on it.

This step assumes that you have the wireless LAN working and are able to attach to another system on your network: while in Win98SE, copy the PQ Magic program onto the root of the C: drive (in a directory called "PQ" perhaps).

Reboot the ProGear and press F8 during boot up and go to "Command Prompt".

Run PQ Magic (CD into PQ or whatever as necessary). Resize the C: drive to 2G. Create a new partition with the remaining 3G as extended D: drive. My advice is to leave the recovery partition alone; you may be glad you did later. 'Sides, you won't need that 600M for anything, really.

Reboot back into Win98.

Over the WLAN, copy the I386 directory off the WinXP disk on another system to the D: drive. Go get a cup of coffee, tea, beer… actually, a pitcher of beer might be more like how long this may take. (Important: see “Notes for Windows XP Upgrade version” if applicable before proceeding.)

Restart the computer, pressing F8 during boot up and go to “Command Prompt”. This will put you at the C:\ prompt again.

Skip ahead of the LX/HX notes to “Installing Windows XP”.

With "LX/HX" unit (Linux based)

This is based on just starting from scratch by removing the drive. There is an alternative way to get the WinXP install files on if you know how to create a FAT32 extended drive and copy the files over while in Linux. 'Course, if you know that, you probably don't need this set of instructions.

This set of instructions is designed around doing the implementation by opening up the ProGear and moving the drive over to a “desktop” type computer using an IDE adaptor from the 2.5” drive to a 3.5” IDE connection on the desktop system. I initially wrote this based on doing the change without removing the drive, but I could not find a floppy drive or CD-ROM drive or PC-Card drive that would boot on the ProGear. Since no-one else seems to have found one either, I’ve re-written this for the “move the drive to another system” implementation as it seems to be the only way I know of to do this without some significant Linux expertise.

There are pictures to accompany this instruction set in the FAQ section.

You will need:

1) T8 size Torx driver

2) #2 Phillips driver

3) 2.5” to 3.5” IDE drive adaptor

4) IDE cable

5) Patience – read the directions before starting

Remove the drive from the ProGear:

1) Open the case

a. Remove the battery

b. Remove the six T8 Torx screws on the back

c. Remove the two small Phillips screws under the battery

d. Gently lift the back off the unit

i. Be careful to keep the cover and its attachment rod intact

ii. Lift straight up very gently and everything should stay in place

iii. Note the positioning of the side rubber pieces; they should sit in channels on the top and/or bottom

2) Unscrew the four screws holding the hard-drive in place

3) VERY GENTLY slide the drive away from the mount (to the right if you have the battery compartment on the bottom). Gentle “wiggling” seems to work if it is not easy to move.

a. Do not lift up on the drive until it is completely cleared of its connection to the IDE interface

b. Lift the drive straight up to remove it (do not slide it around or tilt it lest you break something)

4) You are now ready to attach a 2.5” to 3.5” adapter

Note that it took me just a few minutes to open the ProGear and remove the drive to take the pictures – this is not a difficult task… I’m just trying to give you all the warnings possible, lest you damage your ProGear in your haste.

Set up Desktop system with ProGear drive:

I am writing this based on using PQ Magic to reformat the drive, since it seems easier to walk people through. There is a “Try Now” option for PowerQuest’s Partition Magic if you haven’t tried it. If you’re comfortable with fdisk or some other tool, fine. Before you do anything, be certain you have a floppy disk you can boot to DOS with. I like to have at least two of them lying around, just in case.

Attach a 2.5” to 3.5” adapter to the drive. Note that “Pin One” on the adapter (often marked with a “1” or an “arrow” or “triangle” or a red line) coincides with the lower portion of the drive, as it sits in the ProGear. As always, be very cautious when connecting such things, so as not to break a pin or something horrible like that.

Attach the ProGear with adapter to an IDE cable and put it into your desktop system on your secondary IDE interface. If it is in use, consider disconnecting your CDROM drive or such to free it up – temporarily, of course. If you don’t want to do that, the alternative is to jumper the drive as a slave and set another as primary… if you’re comfortable with that, go for it. Ultimately, you should end up with your primary disk capable of booting to DOS (or you can use a floppy disk to do that if your primary disk is formatted NTFS).

Note that this is one place where it seems that the most problems have been encountered in this conversion. Different BIOS will choose different drive geometry for a drive. If the BIOS drive geometry does not match what the ProGear has, you will have problems later (when the XP install actually starts). For the IBM 5G drive, the ProGear uses the settings of 10336 Cylinders, 15 Heads, and 63 Sectors. If your system is using a different drive – or you’re just not sure if it’s the same – check the ProGear BIOS drive geometry, then check the BIOS geometry on your desktop to be sure they match.

Boot up your desktop system to DOS. Run PQ Magic (hopefully, you know where it is on your system or you have used a floppy disk to boot and you have it there). Delete all partitions on the drive. Create a 2G primary partition; make it "active". Create an extended partition with remaining space. Reboot to DOS again. “SYS” the new drive (probably will show up as your “D:” drive) by running “sys d:” (or whatever is applicable) at the command prompt.

At this point, I recommend that you test to make sure it works. Disconnect your primary drive and see if the system will boot to a DOS prompt on the ProGear drive. If all is well, it should. If not, start over with partitioning it and be use the “wipe first sector” setting in PQ Magic. If it works, replace the primary drive and reboot. At this point, booting to your Windows environment is fine.

Unzip the “flasher.zip” files into the root of the new primary partition you created on the ProGear drive. This is preparing the system to flash the BIOS when it first boots up, which will allow the USB keyboards to work in DOS so that you can proceed with the XP installation. Edit the autoexec.bat (in Notepad, for instance) that just copied over and add a last line of “del autoexec.bat” to the end of the file so that it will only do this once, then you’ll be able to proceed with the XP install.

Copy the XP I386 directory over to the secondary partition on the ProGear drive (I like to put it under \Disks\WinXP\I386, but it really doesn’t matter). This will take a while… go get a beer. Copy the files himem.sys and smartdrv.exe off your main drive (usually in the Windows directory if you have a Win95/98/Me variant or elsewhere if you don’t) to the root of the primary partition of the ProGear drive. Make sure there is a “config.sys” file telling it to load the himem.sys file. The config,.sys file is a simple text file with one line in it: “device=himem.sys”.

Should you find yourself back in the Program without this file, you can type "copy con config.sys" from a DOS prompt and it will give you a blank line; type "device=himem.sys", then enter, then hit Ctrl-Z and you've got the config.sys file.

Reinstall the drive to the ProGear:

Install the drive back into the ProGear (reverse the removal directions). When re-inserting the drive, remember than gentle wiggling will produce much more pleasurable results than brutal force. Also, be careful not to over-torque the case screws… they will break.

Boot up the ProGear. It will flash itself automatically. When it’s complete, reboot it and you should be at a DOS prompt with your USB keyboard working. You are now at the same point as the Win98 folks and ready to proceed. If you’re not, you’re going to have to remove the drive and try again… more carefully, perhaps… or ask me to rewrite this because it didn’t make sense to you.

Phew!

Installing Windows XP

Hopefully, you’ve followed the above directions to get to this point with either your ProGear SE or ProGear LX/HX unit. If so, you’re ready to do the actual installation.

First, run “smartdrv.exe”, which you – hopefully – copied to the root of your C: drive, if you did the Linux swap. If you came from the Win98 system, you should have smartdrv.exe in your C:\DOS directory. If you don’t have it on there, it’s probably a bit late at this point, so just plan on getting more beer while the next stop goes by. (Thanks to WanderLust for reminding me to put this in here – I think I took it for granted.)

Move to the D: drive of the ProGear. Move into the \I386 directory. Type “winnt” and hit enter. Just accept whatever questions or prompts you get. No changes are necessary; no switches are required. Accept any defaults as you go. Do not convert to NTFS – or do, if you like. XP will install just fine… eventually. It should even recognize the wireless NIC automatically (as I recall). Note that there is a point during the initial installation where you may get a LONG stall where it says “Please wait while Setup copies files to your hard disk” but the disk does not appear to be spinning and no files appear to be copying. This seems to be “the norm” in many cases. Do not reboot… just wait.

At this point, I recommend doing a “ghost” of the partition you just installed. This is the beauty of the dual partition. If you’re attached to the WLAN, you should be able to pull over the ghost.exe or ghostpe.exe file to the D: drive and you’re ready to go.

Restart to DOS – which you should be able to get to by hitting F8 during boot up and choosing “Boot to Windows 98” (or something like that, for you ex- LX/HX folks) to get to a DOS prompt at the C: drive. Run ghost, copy the partition to an image on the D: drive. Reboot to XP. Copy that ghost image to another system for safe keeping.

At this point, you need to decide whether to install all the updates for XP or not. I don’t know if there’s a performance difference with versus without them. I’d expect better performance without them, but I haven’t tried; I patched mine and continue to do so for security concerns and laziness. I know it needs some of those patches for security issues, but don’t want to take the time to determine which are pertinent and which are not. You can just go to windowsupdate.microsoft.com and let them all come down, if you like.

Installing applications – what should you install?

General advice on application installation: start small and go slowly and “image” the system frequently (with Symantec’s Norton Ghost or something similar.

After patching (or not), I’d recommend installing the latest Orinoco wireless drivers (assuming you still have that card in). These are currently available from the Agere web site or just go to http://www.agere.com.

Install the 3M Microtouch drivers available from the Yahoo files section.

Install the SMI Pivot driver for Windows XP available at Silicon Motion’s web site. Be certain to do a “25-point linearization” of the tablet with the new install (or any time you restore a ghost from one system to another) – it makes a HUGE difference. Also, if you’re moving over to XP from Linux, note that the calibration / linearization in Windows requires you to hold down the calibration point for a few seconds, unlike the Linux system (which is a short “tap”).

At this point, most things should be working correctly: pen (as a mouse), suspend, hibernate, wireless – the basics.

Things that will not work: no nipple; no screen brightness control; no specific power control or accurate accounting of the battery state.

There are no “pen services” for XP (yet – until November, anyway) and you don’t have any native handwriting or soft keyboard that works with all applications at this point. The handwriting and soft keyboard that come with Office XP, for example, only works in “Office XP aware” applications – and not in all elements of those, even.

Although it will slow your system down, you may want to consider an anti-viral program if you will be doing a lot of direct web surfing and such on the system. I do not recommend actually keeping it running, however. Disable it completely, then “scan” the system regularly. I know it doesn’t keep you protected that way, but it’s a fair compromise between wide open and horrible performance.

I have installed quite a few things on my system and then reloaded the Ghost images back to where the system was before I installed them. That said, here’s what I’ve found is worth doing in my opinion as they don’t slow the system down enough to counter their benefits (or at all).

Pen Office by ParaGraph is the best handwriting / soft keyboard solution I’ve come across. I’ve been playing with every one that I could find for a while now with the Fujitsu and now ProGear touch pads. This is the best, in my opinion, as it works even on a 486/100Mhz system with 32M RAM running Win95 without noticeably slowing anything down. It supports custom “short cuts” or macros where you write something, then circle it and it spews out words or even paragraphs of text that you’ve pre-programmed it to do when you use that macro. It works in every application I’ve used so far. Best of all, it works very well with Terminal Server / Remote Desktop. Many of the handwriting recognition / soft keyboard programs I’ve tried worked fine in native mode, but created problems when running in a TS/RD environment. Pen Office works great.

Gotta say a little bit more about Pen Office… check this out: write “90” on the screen – anywhere, during any application – and draw a “circle” around it and the screen goes to the 90 degree rotation position and the calibration tool loads (same for “180” and “270”, of course). Write “00” and circle it and everything goes back to normal rotation and the calibration tool pops open again. Tired of writing your name and/or address and/or phone info… or whatever… write your initials and circle them: everything writes itself in. Write “IE” and circle it; Internet Explorer opens. Macros rock. Handwriting without them just isn’t right.

The only thing about Pen Office that doesn’t work as well as I’d like is when the ProGear is rotated. It seems that the rotation process consumes a bunch of video memory – try doing a 180 degree rotation while in 16-bit color… doesn’t seem to want to do it. This makes the drawing on the screen for handwriting recognition un-usably slow. Dropping down to 256-colors seems to fix the problem, but that’s a bit of a sacrifice. Gotta be a caveat here and there, eh?

I’ve found that between the Microsoft Reader and Adobe’s eBook Reader and Acrobat Reader you can read most of the eBooks out there. Yes, there are many other readers, but I’ve found more books formatted for these than most other environments. If you’ve got better ones you’d like me to add to this, let me know.

I like to be able to show people pictures and/or run a slide show of pictures. This is great for the “cool” factor when showing off the tablets to people. ACDSee and ACDSee Classic are great for this. If you do the 256-color setting (as described later), picture quality will suffer in a big way.

I have also installed portions of Microsoft Office XP to be able to do some basic word processing and spreadsheets, as well as mail/calendar/etc to our office Exchange server. If you choose to go this way, I recommend a fairly stripped down installation, putting in only the portions you need. I recommend NOT installing the Microsoft Office advanced input options (handwriting, soft keyboard and voice recognition). They consume system resources and do not work acceptably nor across multiple software environments. If you want to use Microsoft’s solutions for these things, wait for Windows XP for Pen to come out in November – though I suspect the third-party products will continue to be superior. No shots at Microsoft in particular intended here, but I’ve seen the Microsoft Pen solutions on Windows 95 and Windows 98 and they’re stripped versions of the CIC solutions. The CIC products remained greatly superior throughout the Microsoft offering of them.

If you know of any other applications that you consider to be “must have” on your tablet, let me know so I can check them out and/or add them to this.

Tweaking Windows XP – make it run faster!

Introduction

There has been a lot of spew on the relative performance differences of the original Linux versus Windows 98 ProGear systems, as well as more spew on all the variations of Linux and Windows 98 versus Me versus 2K or XP. I have not played with the Linux implementation of the ProGear much. It didn’t seem faster to me than my XP environment and it was hobbled – as it was on old apps.

That said, I chose to go XP with my systems for two simple reasons: stability and functionality. In my experience, XP is much more stable than Windows 98. For pure web-pad functionality, Win98 would probably work; but I wanted to have the option of doing off-line MS Office stuff. In my experience, only Windows 2000 and XP come close to meeting the stability of a Linux system while allowing this type of functionality. I know from experience that I can use an XP system for weeks without a crash or reboot while suspending / hibernating multiple times per day. I have not seen that stability in Win95/98/Me.

So… how to get an XP system to run worth a damn… it’s a resource hog from hell. XP spends more processor time drawing those pretty backgrounds and making 3D buttons than running the core applications you’re using. I’ve stripped the fancy GUI functions off every XP system I’ve used and seen a huge performance improvement. I’ve stopped a few non-essential services in the quest for performance, but nothing like I did with the ProGear.

Following the references at Black Viper’s site, I went nuts. I stripped down to where there are only sixteen services actually set to “Automatic” and “Started” on the system. There are a couple of things that I have to turn back on to use them (like the Windows Installer), but they’re almost never used, so I don’t see a point wasting the resources.

After a fresh reboot, according to Windows Task Manager, I have 52M of "available physical memory". According to a diag prog (FreshDiagnose – used something else just as a sanity check), I have 49M of "available physical memory". This is of a total of "112M total memory". In other words, XP is running in about 60M or so.

After running FreeRAM Pro with a basic memory clean up, I’ve got around 80M free, according to Task Manager. Yes, I know there are many, many, many memory optimization programs out there… if you have one you prefer, try it out. If it works great, let me know.

I'd say my XP implementation now runs at least as fast as the original Win98 - probably faster. Much of this document was typed a ProGear as it sits in a cradle (the “non-USB” cradle from Mira2Go. It actually has a single USB port in the back, which works out well. I have a small USB hub plugged into it with a keyboard and a mouse plugged into the hub; I just drop the ProGear in the cradle and use it as a decent computer – albeit a slow one with a really small screen. I’m using Microsoft Word 2002 (from Office XP) – no small application – and it’s working very well. Handwriting recognition (using PenOffice) works excellent and once you load a program – and clear up the memory, if you want it to work better – it really runs pretty well.

On the “FWIW” side, I ran the system without any swap file for a week or so – I had turned it off to do a drive defrag and forgot to turn it back on – and it still ran quite well. Appropriately stripped, XP seems to be a pretty decent OS… it’s just a pig by default.

Here’s my notes – follow them at your own risk!

All disclaimers you can think of apply. While this works for me, if this blows up your system, please place no blame… I’m only trying to help.

Basic tweaking – maybe XP should always be this way

Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs, Add/Remove Windows Components: kill everything except Internet Explorer and Update Root Certificates. It’s okay to keep Accessories stuff, there should be no performance hit.

Once XP SP1a is installed, hit the “Add/Remove Windows Components” again and kill MSN and MSM.

Control Panel, Display Properties, Appearance tab: Choose “Windows Classic style” in “Windows and buttons”.

Effects button: disable transition effects, Clear Type, menu shadows, and showing window content while dragging.

Control Panel, System Properties,