Alex Parker

Just a thought...

Toshiba M400 and Vista RC1

 

Well it has been another wave of Windows Vista releases, er, I mean, rebuilds…=) 5536, 5552, 5600…

 

I don't know if 5600 is the official RC1 but it is branded RC1 on the desktop so there is a good chance that it is.

 

Well lets begin with my love hate relationship with my Toshiba M400.  All of the above mentioned builds don't include my system's RAID driver, so I have to resort to the WINXP raid driver here.  The next issue I faced, after I installed the OS (btw, 5552 didn't recognize my hard disk even with the XP driver) was that the laptop would crash, BSOD.  So I installed yet another update,  the ACPI BIOS 1.70.

 

I finally have it installed and I have to say that it is awesome (again).  It finally has Aero Glass support out of the box!   The weather gadget is finally back, along with a few old friends, an updated Calendar gadget, updated RSS feed reader gadget, and finally a Slide Show gadget that allows you to select a directory of your choice.

 

Here are some hotkeys that you might find useful.

 

Windows Key + G - tabs between gadgets

Windows Key + D - shows desktop

Windows Key + E - Windows Explorer

Windows Key +  R - Run

Windows Key + T - Tabs between applications on the Task Bar

Windows Key + U - Ease of Access Center

Windows Key + F - Search

Windows Key + L - Lock

Windows Key + X - brings up Windows Mobility Center

Windows Key + M - minimizes all applications (shows Gadgets!)

 

...

 

Wait…It looks like the Memory Management BSOD crash issue is back…Maybe I may need to retract my "this is awesome" statement at least from Toshiba…Maybe my IBM ThinkPad will fair better ;)...

 

...

 

It is official, 5600 is RC1.  It is on Google News, technology section. 

 

To be continued...

Posted: Sep 03 2006, 11:28 PM by alex | with 3 comment(s)

Comments

Daniel Story said:

Have you managed to get the M400's Bluetooth module working under RC1? Or screen rotation for tablet mode, for that matter? Just got 5600 up and running on mine and was, like you, overjoyed to see Glass support out of the box. I haven't experienced any crashes or BSODs, though, so I'm not sure it's a problem with the core unit. (Mine did, however, have the OEM memory tossed in favor of some Corsair SO-DIMMs -- but still, your brand of memory chip is rarely a factor in BSODs, I would think.) Driver support has, without a doubt, been the most frustrating thing imaginable with Vista (on all my machines, though the M400 is particularly bad due to the silliness of using a RAID controller for a single disk system). Let's hope hardware manufacturers pull their collective act together in time for RTM.
# September 5, 2006 2:07 PM

Joe said:

Just curious if you reported the bugs via M$'s process or to Toshiba... I'd think they'd want Vista running well on M400's. Thanks for sharing your experience, I had an early beta copy on my M400 and have been waiting for a more stable release.
# September 8, 2006 1:59 PM

Erik said:

Have you managed to set up your sound card and drivers? I am running M400 with Vista RC1 5600.
# September 19, 2006 3:21 AM
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