Windows Vista vs Toshiba M200

As regular readers know I've been caught in a battle between Windows Vista and my Toshiba M200 Tablet PC.

The root cause? nVidia's Vista drivers not turning the screen back on when resuming from sleep. In the whole beta program and up until now with the final version I had been using the Windows XP drivers Toshiba had posted on their website, largely without a hitch, but they are dated 2004, don't support Aero Glass and all the other nice things that WDDM drivers do support.

Anyway a few days ago I fired up Chess, and the system threw up a stop error, you can guess that nv_disp was mentioned somewhere in it. That was it I decided, time to use the Vista drivers and just use hibernate instead of sleep.

So I installed the latest Vista drivers 97.52 (with a modified inf so they actually install), rebooted and the screen wouldn't work at all. I tried some older versions with the same thing. So I System Restored back to how it was until I had time to sort it out.

That time came this evening, after about an hour, a system restore and a purge of everything nVidia I could find, I got the system back up and running, I think an old nVidia control panel was to blame, after installing Vista on my M200 I had gone through practically every driver version to see if sleep worked with any of them, I can't imagine the sort of mess that made of the system, when I installed Windows it only installed the standard VGA driver, I guess it felt there would be trouble ahead. But anyway I thought I was sorted, I was wrong.

Where's my hibernate option disappeared to? It was just gone. The hiberfil.sys had seemingly vanished. So I ran 'powercfg -h on' on an elevated command line, which turned hibernate back on. But that started the investigation as to what had turned it off.

After about 30 minutes of going through in my head everything I had done with the system, I realised this was the only machine I had run Disk Cleanup on.

Windows Vista Disk Cleanup

There it is, delete the hibernation file. I must of checked that by accident when I ran it.

So this round of the battle is over. But I feel more in the months ahead. I want to be able to sleep without having to resort to drivers from the dark ages. Come on I know Toshiba don't support Windows Vista on the M200, but this is getting silly, nVidia I'm looking at you.

Categories: Technology Tags: tablet pc, toshiba portege m200, windows vista
Permalink6th January 2007 03:17:59, 430 words, 3851 views11 comments »

11 comments

Comment from: Roger Wilson [Visitor]
Hey, as a M200 owner, I feel your pain. I'm running the same drivers you are but have found a work around for the resume from sleep/hibernation. Basically you have to trick the drivers int changing the display brightness. I edited my power settings so that when plugged in the tablet display is at 100%, when on batteries 80%. When I resume from sleep, if the display does not come on, I unplug the tablet and plug it back in. The driver changes the display brightness and the display springs to life. Hope this helps.

Roger
17th January 2007 @ 04:14
Comment from: Jordan [Visitor] · http://jordan.hofker.org
I have the exact same problem with my m200. Another issue I've run into is not having multi-monitor support, which is a pretty big issue for me.

When I have the problem of the screen not coming back on after sleep, I usually just push the button that the screen presses when closed and then let go of it.
4th February 2007 @ 16:32
Comment from: Corey [Visitor] · http://coreyh.com/blog
Gaa!! thank you! I could not figure out why it would sometimes work and sometimes not.
9th February 2007 @ 04:15
Comment from: Rob [Visitor]
I have hacked together a fix for the display not coming on after resuming from sleep. The details are here: http://mobilepcwiki.com/mpc/index.php?title=Toshiba/M200/Windows_Vista_Installation_Notes#Proper_Suspend.2FResume_with_NVidia_drivers
10th February 2007 @ 03:56
Comment from: Peter Smith [Visitor]
I recently purchased vista and at the same time purchased a Toshiba Audio Player MEGX30. I cannot transfer to this player any music which I have downloaded to my PC.I have installed the Gigabeat Room software and tried in vain for many wasted hours! Microsoft have told me there is no patch to solve this problem. Any ideas? Thanks Pete
18th February 2007 @ 04:44
Comment from: brian [Visitor]
it appears i've done the exact same thing. i'm not sure how to run an elevated command line, so would you mind being more detailed with how you got the option to hibernate back?
26th February 2007 @ 09:08
Comment from: Paul Smith [Member] · http://www.dasmirnov.net/
To get an elevated command line... Right-click on the Command line shortcut and Run as administrator.
26th February 2007 @ 13:37
Comment from: Ron Zamero [Visitor]
Paul would you be kind to post instruction for installing vista on Toshiba m200 from A to Z giving the best stable configuration
i will appreciate if you can tell us what would not work.
16th March 2007 @ 03:28
Comment from: Marcio [Visitor]
Hi Paul, I did the same command as you with an elevated command line and the computer just says invalid parameter. I cant use -h only /? works... Can you help me?
29th March 2007 @ 17:38
Comment from: Ricardo [Visitor]
You can use "power cfg /hibernation on", should work.

I ran cmd from the run dialog box, it gives admin privilege automatically (single account).
5th April 2007 @ 20:28
Comment from: kromak [Visitor] · http://www.juanformoso.com.ar
*****
Genius! I also deleted my hibernate file in a disk clean up. Thank you so much =)
22nd January 2008 @ 01:12

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