Vista Business Ed and my HP TC1100

update: well, after being able to use my sd card fine for a day, i've mysteriously lost it in vista??? wtf? i did update my wifi and got 802.11g working finally.. :) but i wonder if that messed up or if i just got lucky and seeing/writing to the sd was a fluke? drivers show as installed.. more investigating indeed.. 

well, as previously blogged, i received my latest gadget/toy last week and only two nights ago clean installed Vista Business Ed on my pc.   many people have had some problems getting the Q Menu and tablet pc buttons to work by just upgrading from XP to Vista so i decided to go the clean way.  here are a few tips on geting ALL hardware to install/detect/work.  again, my HP TC1100 specs are as follows: Pentium M 1ghz, 1gb ram, 60gb hd, bluetooth, wifi b, sd card, external hp multibay w/cdrw-dvd combo drive. 

after the intial vista install, the only network adapters that were installed automatically was my LAN connection.  so i had to just plug in my TC1100 to my network and i was off and connected.  i then proceeded to run Windows Update to get all of the latest updates and to see if i'd get my wireless drivers, however my adapter was not available. 

now that we have vista all up and ready, lets install those other unknown devices (bt, tablet pc buttons, sd card, wireless, brightness control, q menu).  these were not found by me originally rather are like most of my things; a guide from info i've found on the web and personal experience.

here's a link to HP's driver download page for the  TC1100:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/DriverDownload.jsp?&lang=en&cc=us&pnameOID=376812&taskId=135&prodTypeId=321957&prodSeriesId=376810&lang=en&cc=us

i used the Tablet PC Ed. drivers for Vista and did the hardware buttons/q menu last.  Basically to get the other devices to work, you will need to download the drivers from HP, then right-click on each .exe installer and go to Properties > Compatibility.  Then check the box to make it compatible for XP SP2/2000.  Now run the installer, it should go through and may complete w/o a comfirmation window (happened on a few of the drivers for me at least, fluke?). finally, i would go to Start Menu > Control Panel > Device Manager.  Then right click on the uninstalled devices > update driver software.   then choose "Browse my computer for the driver software".  Now click on the browse button and navigate to C:\SWSetup and click OK.  Also be sure to check the "Include subfolders".  This makes installing the drivers a cinch since all of the drivers we installed previously reside under the C:\SWSetup folder (HP's default unzipping folder for updates/softpaqs) 

i also used the tablet ed video drivers (seems to allow you to do the brightness control and rotation w/o probs, however nview desktop manager bsod my vista when i tried it) from HP.

finally, i installed the q menu software first, then tablet pc buttons (via device manager, manually after running the .exe from HPs site), and then re-installed q menu; rebooting after each install (3 reboots).   after your finall reboot, go to the Tablet PC Settings and you should have a buttons tab.  go ahead and setup your Q Menu link to be to the qmenu.exe in program files (by default vista will launch your homepage).  i setup like to setup my start menu button for when i hold the Q Menu button. very handy!

also, you can add shortcut to the Mobility Center in Q Menu by going to Q Menu settings, click the Add button, then Display Name: Mobility Center, File Name: mblctr.exe  . 

as for the SD Card reader, my experience was weird.... i tried to install it manually like the other drivers but was not able to get it to consistently show/detect it.  so i then went to windows update and downloaded the suggested driver update.  that has seemed to fix my problem, nice having that 1GB SD to backup docs to.

on the downside, here are a few issues i've been experiencing and plan to tackle tonight:

-my HP WLAN driver does not connect to 802.11g speeds, only b speeds (may be a prob w/my setup on my router since i had to underclock it to get my Wii and DS to work properly and its SO OLD.. ) NOTE! went to windows update and installed the HP WLAN update and i believe that seemed to resolve my wireless connecting issues. :)

-standby issues; i am not able to use the pen or keyboard after waking from standby.  i plan to create a new pagefile to see if this resolves the problem and mess w/my power setups and see if i can figure that out.  if not, i may end up doing a full clean install of Vista again.

i'll post more updates as i go... :)