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Even before Windows 7 was officially released, many owners of the Fujitsu LifeBook U820 had tried out the Windows 7 beta version and had nothing but praises for it.  A week after Windows 7 released I purchased my own electronic digital distribution and created bootable DVD to try out on my U820.  The Fujitsu support site had also released U820 Windows 7 compatible drivers.

Fujitsu didn’t provide any “Chipset” or “Video” drivers for Windows 7 therefore I downloaded the ones for Windows Vista and installed those instead.  To properly install the drivers for Windows Vista, it needed to be ran in Windows Vista compatibility mode.

Right click on the executable file and select “Properties”.  Check off “Run this program in compatibility mode for:”, and select “Windows Vista” from the drop down. Finally, check off “Run this program as an administrator”.

To resolve the unknown devices found in the Device Manager, I installed the “Fujitsu System Extension Driver: FUJ02E3″ and “Fujitsu HotKey Driver FUJ02B1”, followed by the “Fujitsu System Extension Utility” and “Fujitsu HotKey Utility”

To enable the 3 buttons below the screen, I installed the “Button Driver”, “Button Utilities” (for Windows Vista), and the “Fujitsu Zoom Utility”

The touch screen wouldn’t calibrate properly but was resolved by installing the “Pen” driver.

The “GPS” driver for Windows 7 was not provided as well, therefore I used the Windows Vista driver for that as well.

Other drivers that I installed were:

• Audio
• Bluetooth
• Camera
• Fingerprint Driver
• Fujitsu Mobility Center

Drivers that I did not install:

• Media Slot
• Power Saving Utility
• WLAN (Atheros)
• WWAN (Sierra Wireless – AT&T) UMTS

I brought the Fujitsu LifeBook U820 UMPC shortly after it was released 4th quarter last year.  With a rotatable touch screen for tablet mode, Bluetooth, GPS, WiFi, memory card readers, and a camera, it had all the gadgets I needed built in a very lightweight and compact computer.  The only dissatisfaction was Windows Vista, the default OS it came with.  The Intel Atom Processor Z530 was simply not power enough to support such a … piece of software.

Fujitsu probably also knew about this because I managed to find U820 drivers for Windows XP Tablet PC on their support website.  Without anything to lose, I decided to give it a shot.

Fujitsu Windows XP Tablet PC Drivers

I managed to find a copy of Windows XP Tablet PC and did a fresh install on my U820.  The first thing I learned was the drivers didn’t install properly without Service Pack 3 and .NET Framework 2.0 or above.

Before doing anything else, the first set of drivers I installed were the “Chipset” and “Video (Intel)”.

To enable the 3 buttons below the screen, I installed the “Button Driver” and “Button Utilities”.

Next, to resolve the unknown devices found in the Device Manager, I installed the “Fujitsu System Extension Driver: FUJ02E3″ and “Fujitsu HotKey Driver”, followed by the “Fujitsu System Extension Utility” and “Fujitsu HotKey Utility”

The touch screen wouldn’t calibrate properly but was resolved by installing the “Pen” driver.

The rest of the drivers were pretty intuitive and could be installed in any order.

The drivers which I didn’t install were:

AT&T Communication Manager
AT&T Service Activation
Fujitsu Power Saving
LAN
Pointing
WWAN (Sierra Wireless)

As expected, the computer was a lot more responsive and significantly faster when running Windows XP.  The only issue is the volume scroll wheel doesn’t work until the computer wakes up from Standby.

A week ago my wireless network card died on my IBM Thinkpad T42. I visited the IBM shopping website to look for the Intel Pro/Wireless 2200BG and found it cost approximately $80 not including taxes and shipping. Knowing the price tag was totally unreasonable, I looked somewhere else, and I ended up getting it at Dell for half the price!

After the network card arrived, I immediately replaced the card and booted up my laptop. Next thing I know, I see an error message:

1802: Unauthorized network card is plugged in
Power off and remove the miniPCI network card.


Apparently IBM insists on only accepting “IBM brand” wireless cards through a restriction set in the BIOS. However, there is a fix available for the 1802 error: a DOS program no-1802.com, which will flip a single bit in the CMOS, allowing use of any Mini-PC wireless card.

I disabled the wireless card through the BIOS, to avoid having to physically remove it. Then follow the steps to apply the fix:

1. Download no-1802.com
2. Boot the laptop in DOS mode
3. Run no-1802.com

Nothing happened after running the command, I rebooted the laptop and re-enable the wireless card from the BIOS. The laptop was able to boot without any issues, and I’m able to use my new wireless card successfully!

For better conveniences, I downloaded bootable CD image which allowed me to boot in DOS. A floppy disk image is also available to download as well.

For more information refer to ThinkPad 1802 Error Fix or Problem with unauthorized MiniPCI network card.

In Japan, I brought myself a UMPC (Fujitsu FMV-BIBLO LOOX U50X/V). Unfortunately, the whole system was in Japanese, thus I had to convert things back to English by installing an English version of Windows Vista, and installing the English drivers for the Lifebook U1010.

One software package which I had remaining and wanted to install Microsoft Origami Experience Pack, a software package specifically designed for UMPC. After downloading the software from the Microsoft website.

When I attempted to run the installation I got the error “Origami Experience runs only on Ultra-Mobile PCs running with Windows Vista”. This was puzzling to me as my computers satisfied both conditions. Frustrated, I did some research and finally found a workaround.

1. Download the Microsoft Windows Software Development Kit for Windows Vista. Apparently, the Origami installer checks the device screen sizes and disallow itself to be installed on any device with a screen wider than 7 inches. The SDK will be used to remove this restriction from the installer.
2. Run the SDK setup.exe file and under the Installation Options uncheck everything except the “Win32 Development Tools”.
3. After the installation has been completed go to the directory C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0\Bin and run the file called orca.exe which is the MSI Editor that we will use to hack the Origami msi file.
4. After the ORCA has been installed, run it from the start menu, and open OrigamiExperiencePack.msi by going to File -> Open from the menu.
5. On the left panel of the application, scroll down and click on InstallExecuteSequence and then on the right panel click on the LaunchConditions item and delete it.
6. On the left panel again, look for the InstallUISequence item and then delete the LaunchConditions item from the right panel again.
7. Finally save your changes, and run the Origami MSI file again. You should be now able to installation the package!

I’m an owners of two IBM Thinkpad; the T40, and the T42, both running on Windows XP. A few days ago both of were experiencing problems with the laptops.

With the T42 Thinkpad, I would lose my wireless connection a few moments after I have turned on the laptop. When I try to ping my router I would get a “Hardware Error” message, and when viewing the Network Connections under Control Panel, the Wireless Connection indicated that it was disabled. An attempt to re-enable the connection would result in the laptop hanging.

The T40 Thinkpad was even worse, as it was haunted by the Blue Screen of Death.The blue screen would appear randomly and very frequently, making it almost impossible to diagnose what was the cause.

It turned out the root case was the drivers for the Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG wireless card, which is the card that was installed on both our laptops.Apparently, the existing drivers which came with the IBM Thinkpad was no longer compatible with newer Access Points (I had also recently change my wireless network encryption from WEP to WPA).I downloaded the latest drivers from, and after installing it, both laptops were working again.

For more information refer to the Intel WiFi Product support page.