If you are wondering what the excitement is about, then you don't know what I and others have been through trying to get other
Tablet PC makes and models back to factory install conditions. Given my failures with my
ViewSonic and a demo HP, I wasn't even going to try with the
Motion, which says a lot when one considers that I was at best the third person to use this machine. I was forced to start from scratch, however, when the
VPN software I need to work from home (when on call) and to work securely via wireless stopped functioning and would not reinstall.
Having read of and experienced Tablet recovery disc's reluctance to boot off and install using USB CD/DVD drives of a differing brand, I thought I'd be slick and see what I could accomplish from within XP. I thought I was getting somewhere when the LE1600 copied the installation files and booted into setup, but it was just a ruse. Setup griped about the presence of an XP installation on the drive, then griped about not being able to copy necessary dlls. The result was an unbootable mess (though if my fingers were nimble, I could still boot the original, screwy installation).
I finally decided to ty it the right way, which was booting from the recovery disc itself. This couldn't be done with the DVD drive plugged directly into the tablet; to my relief, it would boot when I moved the USB cable to the port in the back of the convertible keyboard. I knew I was defeated when the setup screens changed to the Blue Screen of Death I'd seen with other machines and had fully expected to see this time, but I couldn't give up the fight.
I booted back into XP and ran setup again, this time copying the setup files to a second partition. My thinking was that the dlls might not have copied because they already existed, and 1 was hoping to delete and recreate the first partition during this setup attempt. However, when the tablet booted into the setup dialog, my request to delete C: was denied, and I stopped driving down that avenue.
At this point, I started thinking about a certain set of MSDN ISOs I know I could find...but I decided to be a good little tech. I tried booting from the recovery disc once more, hoping the BSOD was a fluke. To my surprise, setup rolled on up to the point where it would accept my input on what to do next! Imagine my joy; I was on my way to clean Tablet PC Edition goodness!
Or so I thought. The Motion wasn't done with me, yet. You see, though it happily accepted input at the point where one must press any key to boot the recovery cd, setup would happily ignore any keyboard input. I booted again and again with the same result. Without much hope of success, I grabbed a spare USB keyboard from my computer room and plugged it in, then rebooted. With this last spell, I finally vanquished the TPCE demons. Setup went smoothly, and I even found reason to be impressed.
The first time the LE1600 booted into XP TPCE, it immediately demanded its drivers and apps CD. I was only too happy to oblige. Fed the appropriate item, it chugged and chugged along, installing drivers, OmniPass, Dashboard and even Adobe Reader with almost no input from me, if any. Until now, I'd always been majorly impressed with the recovery process from Dell, but the Motion process is vastly preferable, as Dell's involves installing the recovery CD app, then selecting the drivers that the application detects, and finally clicking "Extract" to begin the process of installing the drivers...once for every driver. That's just for the hardware; to get the apps re-installed on a Dell, one can look forward to popping other CDs in and out.
So now I have a fresh Tablet Edition install, and I'm mostly delighted. I've got my precious VPN back and was finally able to update my work queue with stuff I'd done on call the past couple of days (saves me from any grief from the higher-ups on Monday). I didn't even have to lose the second partition, which is for Vista testing. There's just one thing: if Mcshield doesn't stop hogging my CPU, it will soon go the way of the dodo. I really don't want McAfee on here, anyway, but the Motion belongs to my employer, and as that is what we support, I figured I should probably install it and hand over control to the ePolicy Orchestrator server.
Sure, I know I'm not the first, but this is a first for me, so I'm excited, doggonit! I'm so pleased that I don't even mind mentioning that I actually re-installed the OS using an M1400 recovery disk, only discovering the LE1600's CD after I had to hunt through my collection for the drivers/apps disc. That's embarrassing, but I don't care, since it worked. I don't suppose it would have been the reason for the BSOD and keyboard problems...hmmm?
Tags: Tablet PC, LE1600