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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

Last week I purchased Windows 7 Professional through an online store where they let me download my copy as  an electronic digital distribution.  The downloaded files were not a single ISO image but consisted of 3 files: Win7-P-Retail-en-us-x86.exe, setup1.box, and setup2.box.  This was annoying because I had to take the files and create a bootable ISO image which can be burned onto a DVD myself.

Creating Bootable Windows 7 ISO image

1. Place the downloaded files (Win7-P-Retail-en-us-x86.exe, setup1.box, and setup2.box) in the same directory e.g C:\Win7Pro.
2. Run the Win7-P-Retail-en-us-x86.exe executable to extract and unpack the installation content.  A new directory will be created C:\Win7Pro\expandedSetup which will contain all the Windows 7 setup files.
3. Download the Oscdimg CD/DVD Premastering Utility and copy it into the directory C:\Win7Pro
4. Open the command prompt and run the following command:
   C:\Win7Pro\oscdimg.exe -bC:\Win7Pro\expandedSetup\boot\etfsboot.com -u2 -h -m -lWIN7PRO C:\Win7Pro\expandedSetup\ C:\Win7Pro\Win7Pro.iso

   

When the command has finished, a bootable Windows 7 UDF format ISO image (Win7Pro.iso) will be created in the directory C:\Win7Pro directory which can be burned into a DVD.  The ISO image can also be used to create a bootable USB drive with the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool.

Xming provides an implementation of the X Windows System (X11 server) for Microsoft Windows.  Its useful when needing to use a GUI application on a remote server that doesn’t provide remote desktop access.

Installing Xming

Installing Xming on Windows is easy; download the binary file and follow the installation wizard.

To configure Xming run XLaunch from the Start Menu, otherwise run Xming to start up the application.

When started an icon would appear on the taskbar.

Configure X11 Forwarding in PuTTY

Before establishing and SSH connection go to Connection -> SSH -> X11 in the configuration window and check the “Enable X11 forwarding” box.

PuTTY X11 Forwarding

After SSH connection has been established any GUI application can be run by executing it from the command prompt e.g. the Thunar file manager for Xubuntu

Running Thunar in Windows with Xming

More detail information can be found here.

A while back my workplace’s information security department decided to increase the security of our PCs.  The increase in security meant my computer was more locked down with some administration privileges removed, and was being very heavily monitored.  Not wanting to through to all the approval process to install free/open source software which aren’t company standards, I decided to create a virtual machine so I can still have my sandbox to play with.

VirtualBox is an open source software from Sun Microsystems that allows a “guest” operating system to run on top of an existing “host” operating system.  A portable version is available at http://vbox.me, giving you the ability to create a virtual machine on a portable drive.

Creating a Virtual Machine

Creating a virtual machine with VirtualBox is very intuitive, just click on the “New” icon and go through the “New Virtual Machine Wizard”

Sun VirtualBox

New Virtual Machine Wizard

After you have completed the wizard you will be presented a screen with all the details of the virtual machine you just created.  I’ve created a Windows XP virtual machine.

Windows XP Virtual Machine

To install the operating system onto your virtual machine.  In the “Details” tab, click on the “CD/DVD-ROM” settings and check off the “Mount CD/DVD Drive” check box.

CD/DVD-ROM Settings

Insert the installation disc of the operating system in your ROM drive and click on the “Start” icon to being the installation.

Installing Windows XP

After the installation has completed un-mount your CD/DVD drive or change the boot sequence in VirtualBox before starting your virtual machine again, and you are done.

Running Windows XP Within Windows XP

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.