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, Advanced tab, Performance settings button: choose “Adjust for best performance” (which kills a bunch of crap).

Control Panel, System Properties, Advanced tab, Advanced tab of the Performance Options: change the Virtual Memory so that there is a static paging file, preferably on a secondary partition, so that it is less likely to become fragmented. The paging file should have the same “Initial size” and “Maximum size”. I recommend no more than 256M RAM in most cases. Depending what you see in a memory usage report, less can be used – even none, in some cases. If this is done correctly, you should see NO paging file on the C: drive and a “256-256” on the D: drive.

Control Panel, System Properties, Advanced tab, Error reporting button: use “Disable error reporting”.

Control Panel, System Properties, System Restore tab: Turn off System Restore on all drives. Use Ghost or the like – this thing is a pig.

Control Panel, System Properties, Remote tab: Disable Remote Assistance and Remote Desktop (if applicable) unless you will use them. If you’re using some other remote control program, you won’t need these.

Control Panel, Taskbar and Start Menu: keep the taskbar on top, no auto-hide.

Control Panel, Taskbar and Start Menu, Start Menu tab: use the “Classic Start menu”. Customize it with everything disabled and no “expand” options.

Control Panel, User Accounts, “Change the way users log on or off” and disable “fast user switching” and the “Welcome screen” if they’re on.

Install the Tweak UI program for XP from Microsoft.

Under General: disable everything

Under Mouse, you may want to make the “Double-click” and “Drag” sensitivities larger for pen and touch purposes. Not a speed improvement, but a world of difference in usability of the touch screen.

Under Taskbar: disable them

Under My Computer, AutoPlay, Types: disable them.

Under Templates, disable as much as you can tolerate. This affects when you use a “new” right click.

Under Logon, Autologon, you can… well, it’s obvious, right?

Not really a performance issue, but I like to change the “My Computer, Special Folders” so that things like Data, Music, etc, all point to a secondary partition or a network drive, so that they’re not taking up space on the boot drive which gets “imaged” with all that crap on it.

Optional (degrades picture quality significantly): Control Panel, Display Properties, Settings tab, Advanced button, Adapter tab, List All Modes button: choose “1024 by 768, 256 Colors, 60 Hertz” and “okay” your way back out. This sets you down to a much lower color depth on the screen – photos will look bad – but it does speed things up with the user interface and enables handwriting recognition to work in rotation modes versus “barely working”.

Optional (can’t recover deleted files): Recycle Bin properties, check “Do not move files to the Recycle Bin.” You can disable the Recycle Bin from the desktop with TweakUI.

There are more tweaks to be done using TweakUI and the Group Policy Editor, but nothing particularly significant that I've seen.

Shutting off Services – more performance for the daring tweaker

SERVICES - here's where the big difference comes from (other than all the GUI stuff, which, IMHO, is a total waste of processor power).

Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Services. Double-click on things mentioned below and change their "Startup type" from either "Automatic" or "Manual" to "Disabled". It seems that I may be able to disable a few more things, but the improvement thus far has already been very significant.

I’ve grouped them into different categories, so you can see where they started and where I have them now.

USED TO BE "Automatic" (now "Disabled")

Alerter

Distributed Link Tracking

Error Reporting Service

Help and Support

Infrared Monitor

IPSec

Messenger

Network Location Awareness

Portable Media Serial Number

Print Spooler

Remote Registry

Secondary Login

Shell Hardware Detection

SSDP Discovery Service

System Event Notification

System Restore Service

TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper

Terminal Services

Themes

WebClient

Windows Time

USED TO BE "Manual" (now "Disabled")

Application Layer Gateway Service

Application Management

Background Intelligent Transfer Service

ClipBook

COM+ Event System

COM+ System Application

Computer Browser

Distributed Transaction Coordinator

Fast User Switching

IMAPI CD-Burning COM Service

Indexing Service

ICF/ICS

MS Software Shadow Copy Provider (may be needed for Ghost)

Netmeeting Remote Desktop Sharing

Network DDE

Network DDE DSDM

NT LM Security Support Provider

Performance Logs and Alerts

QoS RSVP

Remote Access Auto Connection Manager

Remote Access Connection Manager

Remote Desktop Help Session Manager

Remote Registry

Removable Storage

RPC Locator

Smart Card

Smart Card Helper

System Event Notification

Task Scheduler

Telephony

Telnet

Uninterruptible Power Supply

Universal Plug and Play Device Host

Volume Shadow Copy

Windows Image Acquisition

Windows Installer (turn back to “Manual” to install .MSI packages)

Windows Management Instrumentation Driver Extensions

WMI Performance Adapter

STILL SET TO "Manual" - May be able to disable more?

Logical Disk Manager Administrative Service

Net Logon

STILL SET TO "Automatic" - May be able to disable more?

Cryptographic Services

DHCP Client

DNS Client

Event Log

HID Input Service

Logical Disk Manager

Network Connections

Plug and Play

Protected Storage

RPC

Security Accounts Manager

Upload Manager (gotta test this one - might be able to kill)

Windows Audio

Windows Management Instrumentation

Wireless Zero Configuration (may not need - WaveLAN native work?)

Workstation

Update on “stripped” config: I’m looking over at a ProGear right now, which is running a couple of instances of IE (including one with my home cameras up) and MS Outlook, as well as PenOffice, Battery Status, and a Home Automation client associated with my HomeSeer system which I use on all my systems. It has 66M RAM free. Stripping is good.

Wrap Up

Hope all went (goes) well for you. Please let me know if there’s anything I missed or messed up. Also, I’m interested in any input anyone has on this or very similar subjects. I use the ProGear and Fujitsu touchpad computers as home automation and audio-visual controllers primarily. I also use them as remote desktops to my primary systems in the house. Right now – temporarily – my wife is using a ProGear (mostly in Terminal Server mode) as a replacement for her notebook while it is being repaired.

Cheers!

-Gregory

ProGear FAQs

ProGear Hard-drive removal and replacement

From the back of the ProGear, remove the Torx screws using a #8 Torx driver. There are four screws visible without removing the battery.

With the battery removed, there are two more Torx screws and two very small Phillips screws. Remove the Phillips using a #1 Phillips driver.

After removing all the screws, gently lift the back cover. There will be nothing else holding it on. Take care to note that the rubber side-rails are sitting in slots in the front and back of the case; you'll want to ensure they get back into the same position on re-assembly.

The drive is in the upper right area and its mounting frame is held in with four small Phillips screws. After they are removed, you can slide the drive to the right. Do it VERY GENTLY, as some folks have broken off parts on the motherboard when doing this. If you slide it slowly and gently with gentle "wiggling" it comes out quite easily.

Once the drive is slid all the way to the right, it can simply be lifted out.

If you intend to replace the drive with a different drive (40G, for instance), there are four screws on the sides of the drive which hold it to the mounting frame which can be removed and another drive can be installed.

To install the drive into a standard PC, you'll need a 2.5" to 3.5" IDE drive adaptor, which includes a power attachment. Note that the power attachment and "pin one" of the adaptor - often denoted by a "1" or a triangle on the adaptor's PCB - go to the top, as indicated.

Attach a standard IDE cable to the adaptor and you're ready to install it in your standard PC as with any other drive.

Getting your nipple working

by ERavage

I want to create 'how-to' or FAQ to do this. I will work on it in the next few days. Here is the rough draft of how to do it (what I did):

1. WinXP installed (don't know if this works for W2K install)

2. Go get Porttalk (http://www.beyondlogic.org/porttalk/porttalk.htm)

3. Download and unzip to temp directory

-there seems to be a lot of extra files bundled with Porttalk

-I installed porttalk.reg by right-clicking and then merging with registry

-copied porttalk.sys to WINDOWS/SYSTEM32/DRIVERS

4. Make sure you have a copy of joydrv.exe (found in the file area of this group)

5. Create a .txt file called nipbat.bat and add the following line:

allowio joydrv.exe /a (thanks to sharpmark2)

6. Grab the copy of winjoycal.exe from your Progear folder (should be in the root directory of your Progear folder)

7. Create another .txt file called winjoycal.bat and add the following line:

allowio winjoycal.bat /a (thanks to gregory)

8. Take a break

9. Right click on all these files and set to Win98 compatibility mode (thanks again to gregory)

10. Almost there.......

11. REBOOT

12. Run winjoycal.bat (you should not get an error message)

13. Run nipbat.bat

14. Try it out in IE (hopefully it should work)

A couple of notes, it seems each time I reboot I have to run the winjoycal.bat program. Also, you can add the nipbat.bat to your startup but you may still have to recalibrate it each time you start up. Hopefully I gave you the right steps, I am at work and I don't have my ProGear with me so I can double check my methods. Good Luck!

Pivot without recalibration

By cosmoed2000 [cosmoed2000@yahoo.com]

I found a way to use the pivot utility without to run the calibration of the touchscreen everytime you change orientation.

I just looked up the values in the registry and if you change only 1 key it works.

You have to look in the registry at

\HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\VxD\MtsTch\0000

There is a value SensorOrientation, at my system there are two values: 0 for portrait and 2 for landscape. I think this is because of the list with resolutions (sub folders under 0000) in my case the list:

1024x768

640x480

768x1024

I have made two .reg files, one with SensorOrientation=0 and one with SensorOrientation=2 and now the only thing i have to do is before I use pivot is to click on the .reg file. Nothing happens until you rotate the screen. so you don't have any problem with clicking on the right spot.

In advanced options, I have disabled the questions for recalibration, but I don't know if this is absolutely necessary.

Just wanted to share this info because I couldn't find an answer online but several people with the same problem.

Additional note by Gregory: if you rotate to the 270° direction, instead of the 90° direction, it seems that no recalibration is required.

SE recovery partition - solved

By Martin Bene [martin.bene@icomedias.com]

Ok, the question "how does booting the recovery partition actually work" is now officially solved :-) There's a 2nd copy of the MBR/partition table installed in one of the usually unused sectors on track 0.

When told to boot the recovery partition, the bios just loads this 2^nd copy(sector 4) of the MBR instead of the normal one (sector 1).

This information can be important for anyone wanting to replace or repartition the harddisk - if the position of the recovery partition on your disk changes, or if you install a new harddisk that doesn't have this 2^nd copy of the partition table the recovery mechanism via bios setting will no longer work.

What to do about it:

Once you've set up your new harddisk with a working recovery/secondary/whatever partition, you'll need to prepare the disk so you can switch to this 2nd partition using the bios "boot rescue partiton" option.

A simple way of doing that is to

* use fdisk to set rescue partition active; exit fdisk but don't reboot!

* backup the partition table using the script below

* use fdisk to activate your primary partition again

* reboot.

-------------<snip copy_mbr.dbg>----------------

mov ax,0201

mov cx,0001

mov dx,0080

mov bx,1000

int 13

mov ax,0301

mov cx,0004

int 13

int 20

g=100

-------------<snap copy_mbr.dbg>----------------

how to run this:

debug < copy_mbr.dbg

Now some information on the recovery partition: it's a standard linux/ext2 partition with just a few files on it: mainly a statically compiled program /sbin/init and an image file with the data for the recovered windows partition. the partition is bootable via lilo. Main Problem here is that lilo won't survive moving/copying or ghosting.

I'm now looking into converting this into a fat/syslinux based recovery partition; while this could give you some additional features (basic networking + an editor to make repairing a broken win partition instead of just re-imaging possible) it would certainly be much more robust with regards to changes in partition size/location. Still, one problem with this approach remains: the recovery process writes a new partition table, so extra steps are needed to make sure the entry for the recovery partition is fixed after re-imaging. Have to think if/how this might be possible.

Bye, Martin

Norton Ghost and network / usb disk configuration

By: Martin Bene [martin.bene@icomedias.com]

To follow up on my own post:

> Has anyone got a working configuration that allows Norton ghost to access a device other than the internal hard disk?

Using a 3com 3CXFE575CT card with its included dos driver actually works, I can now ghost to another computer :-)

Bye, Martin

Battery Info:

By: GregoryX (gregoryx@exo.com)

I have an extra 3-cell battery that I really don't use (I bought it hoping it would be slimmer than the 6-cell... alas, same shape, just lighter and half the life). I tried opening it for you. It seems to use glue in 3-4 spots. It seems to me that you could close it back up pretty easily.

There are two spots for screws - hear the bottom of the battery - but mine had no screws. There are "catches" on the bottom of the battery - easily pried with gentle screwdriver work. There is a spot of glue on the bottom - one per side - near the middle of each run. There is a spot of glue on each side of the battery. There are "pins" (without catches on them) that go in where the battery interface (electrical) points are (the pins appear to be to hold the PCB in place). There is a spot of glue mid-way between the interface and the cover-holder at the top of the battery (one for either side). There is another "pin" right where the curve is at the top (more PCB). There appears to be more glue along that top rail - though it came apart without breakage with gentle pressure.

After completely removing the cover, it is apparent that there is an internal "bar" running the length of the battery (about one quarter inch from the top rail. It, too came apart without any damage.

How 'bout this for the three-cell battery: there's a piece of tubing running along where the other three cells would have been. I'll have to see if I can get three more of these cells (or better ones altogether) and fix this up. The charging voltage should be the same; I hope they didn't modify the charging amperage to accomodate the three-cell versus six-cell setup. IMO: I doubt it. The tabs are even here to solder to another three cells to run in parallel (makes sense - same voltage). Actually - on second look - all the tabs are there to solder the other three cells in; there are actually three tubes taking the place of the three cells.

The only information in English on the cells reads A&TB AA 61A, LGR18560P (and a serial number and "rechargeable lithium ion battery" and the rest is in Japanese).

So, I put it all back together (not a big deal... just lay the assembly back in the plastic and fit the top & bottom together) and put a piece of tape on the top (you'd never see it while the battery is in the ProGear) and fired back up. All good. Only one piece of evidence: the bottom of the battery is not solid. I guess that's why they used the glue: those little catches aren't quite enough. Two very small screws into those (previously unused) holes: perfect.

There’s very little chance of damaging the battery from what I saw - unless you're pretty careless. I actually used my Leatherman Micra screwdriver blade... nothing technical about this work. Not one sign of prying once the battery is in the ProGear.

Good luck!

Applying a screen protector

By: GregoryX (gregoryx@exo.com)

I’m using the original ProGear screen protector by Strong Engineering. It appears that they have new anti-glare units which look even better. May be time to upgrade!

I would say that I have "almost no bubbles" on mine... and I have "absolutely no bubbles" in the middle - I was just a bit more lazy on the outsides. The key is in applying the protector very, very slowly.

First, use alcohol and a lint- and dust-free cleaning cloth to clean the screen so it is absolutely free of any particles or smudges.

Then, I use a credit card or other plastic tool with a fairly smooth, hard edge. I peel back only a small amount of one side of the protector from its backing and get it as straight as possible on one side of the screen. I use the plastic tool to push the bubbles out of the application as I put it down. I end up pulling the protector back up and re-applying quite a bit to get no bubbles. The end result is a clean application with little or no bubbles. The key thing is that if the center has no bubbles, it is not difficult to get the bubbles out of the edges using this method.

It's a painfully slow process but worth the effort, IMO.

Cheers!

If the keyboard works in the bios, but not at the mouse prompt

> What is the correct procedure for disabling the ps/2 mouse detection error when you un-box the ProGear. Thank you.

1. Hit F8 to get the Win98 boot menu

2. Choose "Command Prompt Only"

3. Edit C:\windows\win.ini and place the following line under the [windows]

section:

4. "SkipMouseRedetect=0" (without the quotes)

5. ALT-F X YES (TO SAVE FILE)

5. Reboot into windows.

Upgrading to Windows XP from a linux machine

By Gregoryx and Ivona Humpalot.

-----Original Message-----

From: Ivona Humpalot [mailto:TopGun84@inter.net.il]

Sent: Sunday, October 13, 2002 7:39 PM

To: progear@yahoogroups.com

Subject: [ProGear] Upgrading to Windows XP from a linux machine

I tried over and over, the way the winxp doc says, but it didn't work. I kept getting all kinds of error messages.

After about 4 hours of suffering and almost smashing my head into my screen, I thought of another idea...

I hooked up my 2.5" drive to my desktop with a 2.5" to 3.5" connector, I used repartitioned my hard drive, c: drive being 2GB and d: drive was all the rest. I copied the Windows XP Pro I386 Directory to D:\i386 and the Windows98 Installation files to c:\ena (using a Hebrew enabled copy).

After that, I went into the c:\ena directory, and started setting up windows98. It copied all the installation files and said it needs to reboot. I let it reboot but i booted from CDROM containing the Windows98 CDROM in it, I selected "Start computer with CD-ROM support".

*hands sweaty now*

I copied over the BIOS flasher files to my C:\ drive over writing the autoexec.bat file and DELETED himem.sys and command.com (YOU MUST DO THIS, BUT BACK THOSE FILES UP ON FLOPPY).

After that, I pulled the 2.5" drive out of my desktop and put it back into the progear. I turned it on and... weeeeee.. bios flashed..

USB keyboard support now enabled...

Rebooted.

Turned Progear off.

Put 2.5" drive back on desktop.

Boot from CDROM with windows98 CD inside - Start computer with OUT

CDROM support.

Remember those files you copied to floppy? copy them back to C:\

Now, The fun part. Turn off your Desktop, pull the 2.5" drive out, move it back to the progear, close it up and turn it on. hold down F8 until the Windows98 boot menu comes up. start command prompt only.

Move to C:\i386

Run winnt.exe

You will now be able to install WindowsXP (if all goes right)

Good luck trying.. u'll need it :P

GregoryX replies:

Obviously, I've done a poor job writing the XP doc, 'cause that's pretty much what it's supposed to help you do. I have pictures of installing the 2.5"-3.5" converter, which I need to make part of the doc - perhaps that'll make things more obvious.

The only part that is not in the doc that you did was the "use the Win98 install disk" part. What that actually did was the same as is described in the doc: "fdisk /mbr" the boot partition (recommended to use PQ Magic in the doc) and "sys" it (which I think is in there).

I elected to recommend the PQ Magic option as it's usually easier for people to use than fdisk, but it hadn't occurred to me to recommend a partial install of Win98 to affect the same results. Still, I think I'll stick with PQ Magic and add an option to use fdisk.

FWIW, you would have achieved the same results if you had (from the desktop PC) copied all the I386 to D: partition (of the ProGear drive) and done a "fdisk /mbr" on the C: partition of the ProGear drive. The difficulty here is that fdisk - to my knowledge - does not allow you to choose what drive you're doing this to, so I'll have to recommend that anyone taking this option make the ProGear drive the ONLY drive connected in their desktop system, then boot to a floppy with fdisk on it to do this. Once the fdisk /mbr is done - provided that the Linux mbr was effectively overwritten (sometimes it's not) - then you could have done a "sys c:" and you would have been right where you got to with the Win98 partial install.

I think the current XP doc has the "how to flash the BIOS" in it - done exactly as you suggest: copy the files from the .zip over to the bootable partition of the ProGear and let it boot once.

For anyone else reading, the "partial Win98 install" actually makes life a bit more difficult, so if you follow the above (fdisk and sys and such), I'd recommend using it, as you won't have the "hold down F8" part.

I'll add this stuff to the doc - along with pictures of drive removal and adapter hook-up.

Cheers!

Further notes: I have since found that some desktops are not recognizing the hard-drive configuration correctly, which is very likely what has caused a few folks to have some troubles with partitions on drives not being recognized correctly and causing a drive that works great on the desktop not work at all – or at least not complete booting into XP correctly – in a ProGear. The key here is to make certain that the drive geometry, as described in your BIOS, on the ProGear and the desktop you use are identical. If you assure this, all seems to go well.

More nipple troubles

By Skywalker and GregoryX

Ah, yes... forgot about that. Sometimes when the BIOS is updated it finds the touchscreen, sometimes it doesn't; or perhaps sometimes it changes what interface it reports as being on - I haven't really verified which is the case.

You'll probably need to go into the BIOS and set the Advanced / IO configuration / Serial A to 3F8 / IRQ4; PS2 should be AUTO; Serial B is for the IR.

Cheers!

-----Original Message-----

From: skywalker19592002 [mailto:trivett1959@msn.com]

Sent: Monday, October 14, 2002 7:10 PM

To: progear@yahoogroups.com

Subject: [ProGear] Controller..

It seem microcal can't find the controller?

It has to find the controller before linearization???

This touchscreen worked under linux???? But under 98 it can't find the controller? What gives? Can anybody help me?

What are you doing with your ProGear?

(forgot who this was from)

if you know linux a bit, and if you're technically minded, there are loads of things you can do with the linux version: be warned, its probably not for the faint of heart, but the device is eminently hackable: I'm looking at making an in-car entertainment and gps system (with my etrex gps, the whole gps system (etrex + progear + usb-serial adaptor) will cost me my time and $750)!

Also debating the use of festival (text to speech) and even possibly voice control, but I suspect my 64M model is going to be a bit hungover memory-wise.

BIOS Settings (and Touch Screen issues)

By GregoryX

If your touchscreen stops working after doing the BIOS upgrade (as required to go from Linux system to a Win system), typically the issue has to do with BIOS setting for COM port. To set the COM port correctly, enter BIOS settings and configure it:

While reboot is occurring - typically best while the "BIOS info" is displayed on top of the screen - press Shift-F2 to enter the BIOS.

In BIOS, set Advanced, I/O Device Configuration, Serial port A to 3F8, IRQ 4.

For the record:

I have IR working using Serial port B as FIR, 2F8, IRQ 3, DMA 3, New HP

Parallel port disabled

Floppy disk disabled (after trying lots of things to get one to work)

PS2 mouse auto-detect

Local Bus IDE adapter primary

Also, I am running ACPI S1 and S3 enabled and all works well with XP.

Tips on installing windows 98 on HX

By gunther_vermeir (gunther_vermeir@yahoo.com)

hello,

i did this in addition to the faq information:

* used win2K to clean out/rewrite boot sector otherwise fat16 partition would not boot (fdisk/mbr was not enough)

* use the latest ali sound driver, not the original as this original has a problem of getting stuck after some time of inactivity. (winamp just won't start, no error - nothing, if you play a wav windows complains it can't find the decoder ????)

* do the installation of windows 98 and all drivers with the power management disabled in the bios (acpi bios -> no and all the rest disabled) i had to do this becaus in my case setup hung at various times during installation, according to win2K setup the apci bios is not 100% compliant.

* if you don't have an usb keyboard and mouse attached during the intallation, you get the ps/2 error. just leave an usb and mouse attached until everything is installed, remove it from the cradle with only the usb keyb attached. it will complain, you can select now 'don't ask this again' wiht the keyb.

* i removed the ali ide drivers as they seem slower then the standard and are really slowing down the resume/shutdown cycles.

* after al drivers are installed the progear will not shutdown properly, enable the apci bios in the bios again (the bios itself and the S1 option, i left the S3 option off as this poses problems with resuming for me) now do a redetect of hardware (add new hardware wizard) in windows before this, disable any screensaver as on the next reboot windows will reinstall ALL device drivers and this takes a while. if the screen saver comes up it gets stuck. after this the porgear comes nicely down.

* i still have a problem with the virtual keyboard , it bluescreens on shutdown

by the way:

might be usefull for some of you:

http://www.winbookcorp.com/_technote/wbta08000026.htm

and and shutdown patch from M$ for win98:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows98/downloads/contents/WURecommended/S_WUFeatured/Win98SE/Default.asp

more win98 updates:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows98/downloads/corporate.asp

Losing USB keyboard after shelling to DOS

By netromancerjones@hotmail.com

I'm running 98Lite on a 64 MB HX unit and I lose the keyboard after I 'Restart in MS-DOS Mode', but it's fine if I boot straight to the command prompt via a boot menu.

I think that the problem is addressed in the MS KB at: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q310923

----------------excerpt

To set the USB host controller to use BIOS settings:

1. Refer to your computer documentation for information about how to obtain the device settings from your computer BIOS.

2. Click Start, click Control Panel, and then double-click System.

3. Click the Device Manager tab.

4. Click to expand Universal serial bus controller.

5. Click manufacturer_name PCI to USB Host Controller (where manufacturer_name is the name of the manufacturer), and then click Properties.

6. Click the Resources tab, and then click to clear the Use automatic settings check box (if the check box is selected) to disable automatic settings.

7. Click Input/Output Range, and then click Change Setting.

8. Click the BIOS value for the device. If the conflict information indicates that there is a problem with the device, you may need to modify the settings for that device.For additional information about device conflicts, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: Q133240 Troubleshooting Device Conflicts with Device Manager

9. Restart your computer.

10. If the Use automatic settings check box is selected, follow these steps again and start with step 2.

-----------------

This is also listed as a potential fix for shutdown problems at: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q310922

Trouble is, the I/O range isn't listed in the bios. Anyone know how to find out what it is? Or, could someone running SE that *doesn't* have this problem let me know what their USB settings are?

Ghost Issue: use “-fni” switch from command line.

By WanderLust (tmoceri@yahoo.com)

If Ghost gives a "Abort 36000, a general exception occurred" or "Internal error 36000..."

Try this "ghost.exe -fni". There seems to be a problem with Ghost and the PCI interface. The "-fni" param gets around that. I'm using Ghost ver 7 so YMMV. It is doc'ed in the Ghost pdf but you really have to hunt for it!

Also, you maybe could have saved yourself having to rip out the HD by using a network connection and something like Partition Magic.

BTW, TIP: I also formated the D: partion with DOS /sys and then use System Commander to boot either into XP or DOS. If I ever my C: drive or XP is corrupt I can boot into D: and reghost (although this may be overkill seeing that XP is so stable :).

Symantec FAQ on this: Document ID 1999112214191125 or link: http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/ghost.nsf/8477deaaaafc102288256b1e00704619/06df7b028e074efa08256831007a9b1f?OpenDocument

How to enable pen dragging in Touchware

By yogaman101 (yogaman101@yahoo.com)

If your pen won't drag, and you find the Desktop/Drawing/Button options grayed out on the Touch Settings tab, here's how to enable enable dragging in TouchWare version 5.63 SR3.

On the Tools tab of the "TouchWare Properties (1)" main window, click Options to open "Touch Screen Options", click Advanced to open "Advanced Touch Screen Settings", under Software Settings, fill in the last check box for Enable Touch Modes, then close everything back to "TouchWare Properties (1)".

On the Touch Settings tab, Desktop/Drawing/Button should now be ungrayed, so click Drawing, and exit.

Ahhhh. All better now.

Btw, I didn't change the now ungrayed Button Mode (default) setting in the Custom Touch Mode area on the "Touch Screen Options".

So, it's not the software version, nor any other earlier speculation. I don't know if it's even related to the Multiple Monitors error message that is presented on first running of TouchWare. (In an earlier email, I mentioned that I made that error message go away by clicking Done instead of Cancel, that is, by disobeying the instructions on the Multiple Monitors Layout window.)

I presume that instructions for 5.61 SR1 are similar, but ymmv.

-yogaman

Moving the TouchWare Right-click Tool

By: ???

Hold down the pen on the right-click tool for two to three seconds and you’ll see a “move arrow”. Move the tool.

Using registry settings for MicroTouch TouchWare

By: GregoryX (gregoryx@exo.com)

If you lose your right-touch button (typically by it being “off the screen” somewhere), you can get it back by modifying the registry entries. Also, you can save these same these same registry entries and restore them after a “rotation” changes them, for example.

To get to the right portion of the registry, go to “Start, Run” and run “regedit”. Probably the easiest way to find the keys you’ll be looking for is to do a “Edit, Find” and search for “mtstch”. That should take you to the registry entry that reads:

“My Comptuer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\MtsTch”

There are a number of settings under this key.

Open the MtsTch key up and go to the “0000” (or may be a “0001” etc for yours) and you’ll find the keys for “LRx” and “LRy”. These values – when expressed in decimal – are the pixel position of the upper left corner of the right-click tool, relative to the upper left corner of your screen. The keys can be modified by double-clicking (or “double-tapping”, eh?) on the key name. Be sure to note that the default mode for these keys is hexadecimal – that’s why you see something like the “3ba” as the value when you first open it. Be sure to change to “decimal” before trying to set a value – unless you can dynamically translate from hex to dec and are just a total geek. To just move it to the upper-left – allowing you to move it where you like after you’ve “found” it – enter “0” for both. BTW, entering “0” won’t matter whether you do it in Hex or Dec.

You will need to toggle the right-click tool off and on to see the change you make; this can be done in the TouchWare GUI (in your Control Panel).

If you keep the “My Comptuer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\MtsTch” branch highlighted and go to File, Export, you can save just the “Selected branch”, allowing you to easily bring back in the settings you’d stored for a Portrait versus Landscape setting.

One of my favorite uses for my ProGear systems

By GregoryX

I thought I’d throw a few screenshots of the CD changer control app that I run on my ProGear units throughout the house – when they’re not being used for anything else. The changers are Sony 400-disc changers and are controlled by a Nirvis Slink-E through the Sony S-Link protocol. The two changers have about 700 discs in them at this point; the Slink-E can control up to twelve CD changers and the CD changer control software can control up to eight Slink-E units, for a total of up to 96 changers – currently with up to 400 discs each… let’s see… that’s up to 38,400 CDs all through one control interface. In case you’re curious – ‘cause it seems to be the next thing everyone asks – I also have an MP3 collection and use the SliMP3 to bring them into my audio system.

The Slink-E interfaces to my home server via a serial interface, which allows the Nirvis CDJ software to control it and any attached changers. It also interfaces into my Xantech Infrared Network which ties it to other Audio/Video and Home Automation equipment and controllers, such as the Applied Digital Leopard and its adjuncts.

The Nirvis CDJ software maintains the catalog of all the discs, their cover art, track names, lyrics, artist biographies, keyword / genre information and allows searching, play-lists, and changer alternating for that “DJ fade” effect with no blank sound time between tracks, even when changing from album to album.

Back at the home server system, HomeSeer accesses information from the CDJ software and pushes it out to a web interface, as shown in the pictures below. The buttons at the bottom give control for the play-lists (the first seven buttons on the left), the changers (the next five buttons) and the pre-amplifier, main amplifier that powers the main speakers and additional amplifiers that power the surround speakers and the various distribution amplifiers that power the whole-house speakers throughout the house.

Love this stuff!

HOW-TO: Install Windows 2000 and get everything to work

by Otto <samuel_wood@hotmail.com>

Okay, so I finally got around to opening up my Progear and removing the drive to erase and install a version of Windows. After some back and forth, I settled on Windows 2000 and finally got it installed yesterday. Finished all the updating and getting the bits to work today. Looks like everything pretty much works under 2000 with a bit of coaxing. Still haven't worked out how to make the joystick thingy work, but that's not a big deal. Still, anyone found any way to do it yet?

Since I found lots of tips on these forums and on Yahoo progear group, I figured I'd post this here to help someone.

1. Update firmware.

There's a lot of ways to do this. Update it to the 1.04.07a firmware, so that the USB keyboard support works. Since mine was running Linux originally, I used the method here that I originally posted here: http://www.progearhacking.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Forums&file=viewtopic&topic=10&forum=2

2. Installing 2000:

- Get a PC running NT/2000/XP and which can recognize the progear drive with your adapter. Install the drive into the PC, boot to the existing OS on that PC, and insert the 2000 cd rom. I used an NT box.

- Format the progear drive however you like. I settled on one big NTFS partition.

- On the Windows 2000 CD, open a command prompt, go to the I386 directory, and run this:

winnt32 /tempdrive:d /sysdrive:d /makelocalsource /noreboot

Where "d" is the letter of the progear drive.

- Follow the install prompts. It looks like it's going to install 2000 to your PC, but it's not. The bit where it asks about converting the drive to NTFS, say NO. At the end, cancel the automatic reboot.

- At this point, it's a damn good idea to at least copy the network drivers you'll need to the progear drive. That way you can get the network part working and then download anything else you may need.

You can read ahead and copy a bunch of other drivers to it at this point also, if you like.

The network drivers can be found here:

www.agere.com/support/drivers/windows%20drivers%20sr02-1.zip

Also get the Client Manager here:

www.agere.com/support/drivers/client%20mgr%20for%2

0windows%20sr02-1.zip

And while you're at it, grab a copy of Winzip from here:

www.winzip.com/downau81.cgi?winzip81.exe

Copy all of these to the Progear drive somewhere. I made a build directory as Vadim suggested and copied stuff into there.

- Shutdown, remove the progear drive, install it back into the progear.

- Boot 'er up, and go through the install. You shouldn't have any bluescreen problems by doing it this way. The first method I tried to install caused a bluescreen error, but this is the one that worked.

3. Install networking:

-Once you're running, a lot of bits won't work. Specifically, the 802.11 card won't work right. So, unzip the Windows Drivers file (install Winzip, obviously). The touchscreen won't work yet either, so have a USB mouse handy.

- Open the Device Manager (right click My Computer-> Manage), and find the Lucent WaveLan IEEE card entry. Go to it's properties, select reinstall driver, and give it the directory you just unzipped to (there's a Win2000 subdirectory, give it that full path). It'll find the "Orinoco Integrated Card" driver. That one works.

- Note: There's an updated driver that does work on Windows Update, which you'll run across later. Although the driver works fine, that driver doesn't work with the Client Manager, which I suggest you install next. So I'd not update the driver using Windows Update. The Client Manager lets you change various settings of the card, mainly it lets you switch card profiles, to switch networks. Since I want to be able carry mine between home and work, this makes it easier. It also puts a nice signal strength meter in the taskbar.

4. Install Touchscreen:

-First, we need to get the COM ports working.

-So, step 1: Reboot and hit F2 on the keyboard to get to the BIOS. This took many, many attempts for me. I finally got in by repeatly jabbing F2 as fast as I could while it started to boot. If you see the Starting Windows 2000 and the text bar that goes left to right, just turn it off and try again. Eventually you'll get in.

- Change the COM ports like this:

Make the Serial port A have an address of 02F8, IRQ 4.

Make the Serial port B have an address of 03F8, IRQ 3.

- Boot into Windows. Go to the Device Manager. You'll see two com ports, COM1 and COM3. Right click on COM3 and select Uninstall. It's the one giving you the hassle. It won't redetect either, so I don't know why it's there anyway. Anyway, removing it eliminates the problem COM1 is having. You may need to reboot to make COM1 work. You might want to verify that COM3 is the problem, in mine it had COM3 as being on the 3E8 address. Simply disabling it didn't work, but removing it did.

- Download the touchscreen drivers here: www.progearhacking.com/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=getit&lid=4

- Unzip, run the setup, and make sure you tell it to use a serial connection.

- That's it. It works. It'll ask you to calibrate for any given screen resolution, but it will only ask the first time you use that resolution, so don't be worried you'll have to recalibrate all the time.

5. Screen drivers:

- Yeah, the screen is ugly in 640x480 mode. So download the Silicon Motion Lynx EM drivers here:

www.siliconmotion.com/drivers/lynxem-win2k-6.0.zip

- Unzip and go to the Device Manager. Go to the properties of the existing VGA driver entry. On one of the tabs find the Update Driver button and give it the directory you just unzipped to. Let it install, and reboot when it's done. Now you can run at 1024x768x16bit. Don't run at 24 bit though, because...

6. Screen Rotation:

- The SMI Pivot software doesn't like 24 bit, it says it doesn't have enough memory. But, it has plenty of memory at 16 bit. The SMI Pivot software can be found here:

groups.yahoo.com/group/progear/files/WinXP%20Drivers/SMI%20Pivot%20Software/SMI%20Pivot.zip

- Make sure you're running the new video drivers before you install this, and make sure that 1024 resolution works.

- The hot key for rotation is CTRL-ALT-] or CTRL-ALT-[. CTRL-SHIFT-Z brings it back to normal. You can also enable rotation through the display properties. Once you rotate, you'll need to calibrate the touchscreen, but again, this only happens once. Downside to rotation and the touchscreen is that once the touchscreen calibrates to one rotation (90 or 270) then it remembers it, and if you use the other one, the screen will be upside down, with regard to how the touchscreen thinks it is. Annoying, but not a big deal, you can recalibrate using the Touchscreen program that got installed if it bugs you. Myself, I only use one rotation anyway.

7. Sound:

- Having no sound sucks. Download the audio drivers here:

groups.yahoo.com/group/progear/files/Drivers%20-%20Windows/ALI%20PC99%20Audio.zip

- Same deal, unzip, device manager, update driver, etc.

8. Battery Status:

- First, download the battery status program here:

groups.yahoo.com/group/progear/files/Drivers%20-%20Windows/BatteryStatus.exe

- Second, download the porttalk program here:

www.beyondlogic.org/porttalk/porttalk22.zip

- Unzip porttalk. Copy the porttalk.sys to the c:winntsystem32drivers directory.

- Create a directory for the battery status app. I made a directory called "BatteryStatus" under the Program Files directory. Copy the BatteryStatus.exe and the allowio.exe (from porttalk) into this directory.

- Make a new text file. Call it BatteryStatus.bat. Add this line to it:

allowio.exe batterystatus.exe /a

- Use this new batch file to start the battery status program. I'd add a shortcut to this batch file in the startup, if I were you.

9. Windows Update:

Update everything (*except* the net driver). I'd install Service Pack 3 first. Windows Update is a bit flaky sometimes about this sort of thing, so go to Update, then find Service Pack 3, then click Remove on it, then click Add, so it'll get it's list and priorities straight. A lot of the other updates are included in SP3, so why would you download them all separately? Anyway, do the major updates first (any of those that say they must be installed separately) then do the small ones. Expect lots and lots of rebooting.