Installing XP on a CF-W7 Toughbook

[Luke122]

Panasonic Toughbook CF-W7

Have you ever seen a rugged notebook? They are typically ugly, heavy, and slow. As soon as I heard “New toughbook”, I assumed the worst. Military spec with fat rubber pads on the outside, 10+ lbs, and a tiny, dark screen.

When it showed up in my office, I was completely unprepared. The CF-W7 is gorgeous! It’s sexy, sleek, lightweight, has a bright screen, and a super slick optical drive.

What’s the problem then?

Windows Vista was installed on it, and the legacy software that needs to be installed on it will not work under Vista. So, we downgrade to XP.

There’s a few things to note here though.

When you start the XP install, you need to press F6 to supply a driver for the HDD controller. This driver was a pain to find, but can be downloaded at this url:

https://eww.pavc.panasonic.co.jp/pc/...cgi?main=10440

Once you get that file downloaded, run it, and it will extract a program to make a floppy disk to be used for the XP installation.

There’s one more step though, which isn’t documented here.

Since the toughbook has no internal floppy drive, you’ll need to use a USB one for the install. The BIOS sees it as an external floppy, so it’ll work at first. Once it gets to the part where it actually starts to copy the files, it will fail, saying it cant read the floppy.

What you need to do is open the txtsetup.oem file (with notepad) on the diskette on another computer, and add a few lines.

Under this heading:

[HardwareIds.scsi.iaAHCI_ICH8M]
id= “PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_2829&CC_0106”,”iaStore”

add these lines:

id = "USB\VID_03F0&PID_2001", "usbstor" #--HP
id = "USB\VID_054C&PID_002C", "usbstor" #--Sony
id = "USB\VID_057B&PID_0001", "usbstor" #--Y-E Data
id = "USB\VID_0409&PID_0040", "usbstor" #--NEC
id = "USB\VID_0424&PID_0FDC", "usbstor" #--SMSC
id = "USB\VID_08BD&PID_1100", "usbstor" #--Iomega
id = "USB\VID_055D&PID_2020", "usbstor" #--Samsung

Save it, exit, and run the install again, selecting F6, then specifying the driver for the HDD controller.

Yay! It works now!

-Luke

[Luke122]

This method can also be used to load other drivers during the installation of XP, including USB flashdrives, etc.

[DeuceX]

Clarification for you...none of the UltraLites are "military grade" only the cf-29 and cf-30 are. The cf-w7 is a straight business model not intended for any heavy use. Trust me I work on panasonic laptops for a living.

[Greco101]

Clarification for you...none of the UltraLites are "military grade" only the cf-29 and cf-30 are. The cf-w7 is a straight business model not intended for any heavy use. Trust me I work on panasonic laptops for a living.

and cf-27 but they're dinosaurs.

[Luke122]

Clarification for you...none of the UltraLites are "military grade" only the cf-29 and cf-30 are. The cf-w7 is a straight business model not intended for any heavy use. Trust me I work on panasonic laptops for a living.

Which is why I said, "I assumed the worst. Military spec with fat rubber pads on the outside, 10+ lbs, and a tiny, dark screen."

Thankfully, it was nothing like that at all.

If you work on these for a living, answer me this: Why is Painasonics support site so hard to navigate? It took me forever to find "most" of the drivers for this thing! I still have two unidentified devices in the device mangler..

[Luke122]

I used this trick again today! While tossing Vista out on its ass, and installing XP X64 on Throttle, I was loading the RAID drivers from a USB key. As soon as it loaded the file, it would ask for the disk.. just like before. Added the same lines into the appropriate place on the txtsetup.oem file, and it's golden.

[DeuceX]

If you work on these for a living, answer me this: Why is Painasonics support site so hard to navigate? It took me forever to find "most" of the drivers for this thing! I still have two unidentified devices in the device mangler..

Sorry, I have no idea. I work for an authorized service center, doing warrenty component level repair on Toughbook motherboards.

[Luke122]

[DejavuMoon]

Hi everybody,
I installed XP on CF-W7B Toughbook.
I've installed audio driver downloaded from Toughbook site.
I cannot hear sound from laptop speaker, but I can hear it when I use earphone. What could the problem be?

[Luke122]

That's the exact same issue I ran into with the one I was working on. The solution? I dont know.. the owner uses it exclusively for work in his vehicle and on job sites, so he isnt worried at all about the sound. Bugs me though..