Windows Vista RC1 and the Portege M400

So on my vacation in Switzerland my notebook had this annoying problem where it would fail to hibernate when I closed the lib with the Toshiba Portege M400 Windows XP install. Let me tell you, it is annoying to have a notebook fail to hibernate and drains two batteries because it cannot it cannot hibernate. I have both the built-in battery and the add-on slice battery.

The notebook appeared to get stuck in a loop where it would suspend and then when it had been inactive for a period of time it would attempt to hibernate, fail to do so with some sort of System API failure system tray balloon, and then suspend after a period of time. Rinse and Repeat. Uninstalling Toshiba’s power management toolset didn’t fix the hibernation problem, so I suspect it is another device driver that was causing me grief.

Anyway, when I returned home I had received an email from Microsoft informing me they had released Windows Vista RC1 for beta testing, So I repartitioned the HD of the notebook and installed Vista RC1 and I am impressed. My only complaint so far is that I still haven’t gotten BitLocker working, I keep receiving an error stating that the BIOS wasn’t able to pass along information to the MBR and I did upgrade the BIOS to 1.70. Oh well.

Toshiba published a set of Vista drivers for the M400 here:
Microsoft Windows Vista Drivers for the M400

I have only experienced the BSOD two times in a week, both times happened shortly after I installed the fingerprint reader drivers. I uninstalled the fingerprint reader drivers and haven’t experienced a BSOD since.

The touchpad driver package really isn’t Vista friendly, they add startup references to the registry and Windows Defender complains every time you reboot the box asking if it is okay to start them up again. Either Microsoft needs to add them to the approved list, since I couldn’t find a way to do it myself, or the ALPS touchpad people just need to add themselves via the startup group instead of the registry. The good news is that the touchpad works without the touchpad driver package so you can skip it if you want too.

Intel finally got around to getting video drivers for the M400 put into Windows so Aero Glass is supported the very first time you boot up. Hurray.

If you use the tablet features on the M400 you’ll need to install the XP version of the rotation utility found here:
Toshiba Rotation Utility for Windows XP

All in all, I’m a pretty happy camper right now. To top it all of, hibernation works as intended.

—– Rom

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Toshiba Portege M400, Windows Vista, and BOINC