Comments on: Windows Vista Ultimate on the Toshiba Portege M200 Tablet PC

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 16:55:00 +0000

You did good experiment and invest your $450 for R&D on your Toshiba portage M200 tablet PC. I think you still need to use XP on your system with some OS changes to run the OS fast. May be Linux OS will work fine on this.

By: Windows 7 on the Toshiba Portege M200 Tablet PC at MasterMaq's Blog

Windows 7 on the Toshiba Portege M200 Tablet PC at MasterMaq's Blog — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 06:13:13 +0000

[...] years ago I decided to upgrade my tablet PC to Windows Vista, a process that I detailed here. I don’t use my tablet very much, but I do like to get the pen out from time to time to do some [...]

By: Dave Stiles

Dave Stiles — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 00:17:27 +0000

I took an old Toshiba Tablet M200. I picked up an 80Gig HD for nothing. I installed 2GB of RAM and installed Win7 from work (Microsoft). It runs pretty well but I can’t get Aero and I can’t run it through a projector or other monitor. Any thoughts on how to get a better Video driver, which would support external monitor and Aero? Also, I still have a 1.0 performance rating.

By: adrian

adrian — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 16:08:06 +0000

hi,

so for easy install:
1 take the disk out of the tablet and connect it via usb/ide adater to a windows pc
2 make a 2,4 GB partition as fat32 make sure it is set as active)and copy win 7 install files on it
3 boot
4 install win 7
5 ..ignore the loss of 2,3 gigs… but you economise much time and money

By: Dave Stiles

Dave Stiles — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:12:56 +0000

installed Windows 7 RTM on my Toshiba M200. It runs fine but does not support the sound card or the 802.11 B WiFi. I got a PCMCIA WiFi card and went through the install but still no WiFi support. Any ideas?

By: Michael Ludgate

Michael Ludgate — Wed, 13 May 2009 23:28:23 +0000

In theory…
Compact Flash using the ATA connection interface, a simple adapter (from ebay) replaces a standard HDD. So far the M200 refuses to respond with this setup. Without anything connected to the IDE, the system boots the recovery media but can’t see a HDD to write to (duh!) With the CF system in place, the machine stops responding before it’s possible to raise the toshiba boot menu – no idea why this is. The BIOS can be entered, but changing settings such as EIDE –> standard IDE hasn’t helped.

Darcher, why not mount a PATA SSD. Theirs no performance gain PATA Vs. SATA as the system can’t handle it.

By: Colin

Colin — Tue, 12 May 2009 05:40:01 +0000

I’m dying to say something facetious involving physical rotation

By: Shawn

Shawn — Fri, 08 May 2009 14:49:23 +0000

I just loaded Vista and cannot get the screen to rotate. anyone help?

By: Blaffer4

Blaffer4 — Wed, 06 May 2009 15:53:09 +0000

Since there is little room for adapter cards I don’t think it will be possible to mount a SATA SDD in the PATA slot…

By: Darcher

Darcher — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 11:47:52 +0000

Hi all,

Does anyone know if it’s possible to replace the HDD with a SATA SSD? Is there some sort of laptop Sata host adaptor or non-sata ssd available?

Cheers.

By: alroar

alroar — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 17:55:18 +0000

hello folks,

thanks for the posts, quite intereseting tho. i installed vista on my m200 with only 512mb ram and the default HDD, still i wonder how good vista manages to deal with those low hardware. a bit tweaking in services and win itself it runs quite smooth. ram upgrade is incoming, so will see how it runs then

By: Brent

Brent — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 11:08:09 +0000

I installed Windows 7 (clean install)on my M200 that I just got from ebay. I would love it(but you should never love anything that can’t love you back) so, I thoroughly enjoy it. Nearly everthing works.
Pen buttons and SD card DO NOT work (for me). (also, i’m not sure if this is 7 or my hardware, but the 2nd fan doesn’t ever turn on or even show up in speedfan (yes, i tested the fan). This makes the tablet get pretty warm in tablet mode, (it doesn’t overheat or crash). The CPU Fan works fine and is very silent).
I’m Using the Nvidia drivers from laptopvideo2go.com (98.16). The only thing I (desperately) wanted from Aero was the thumbnail preview of open windows, which works well unless there are alot open (then cuts in and out on mouse hover). Just DISABLE the “Transparent glass” and other menu effects under “performance options” or you will be frustrated. Overclocking the go5200 does NOT work (coolbits and Rivatuner). Rivatuner allows you to set it higher, but the computer will never run the GPU faster than default(pull up hardware monitoring to verify).
All other drivers I got from the european Toshiba website. It hibernates well, but sometimes no video coming out of sleep (mostly if the lid switch is involved), but I simply type in my windows password, then press the Fn+F7(brightness) combo twice and it wakes the screen up.
Voice commands work great, Handwriting Recognition is very good(And I write very poorly. I often can’t read my own writing).
The intel 2100 (B) worked fine with streaming video but required patience for large file transfers on my home network so I bought an intel 2200 (G)on ebay for $12, (easy install but must remove bottom cover completely) which helped greatly. (if you do that, make sure you don’t buy pci_E.)
1.5GB Ram is ESSENTIAL. It came with 512, I thought 1gb would be plenty but it was accessing the hard drive non-stop, and slowing things down. With 1.5, I can have a few things open and the HDD light only flashes once every 20seconds.
That’s everything I know. Windows 7 is great. Tablet PC’s are the best. I wouldn’t wait. Just make sure you have a free day.

IMPORTANT: Save yourself 12hrs frustration, TFTP does NOT work running in windows vista. Run it from an XP machine and you’ll be fine.
OR… you can buy a used TARGUS DVD Rom slim USB drive on ebay for $20, that the M200 will boot off of (need to try the option a couple of times before it works as this gives the drive a chance to spin up). It still boots from it VERY slow, don’t know why. (My other USB DVD did NOT work).
DON’T BOTHER… booting from SD card is NOT an option for vista or 7. It only lets you boot a 1.5mb floppy image from the SD card, no matter how big your card is, and you CAN’T run an XP recovery floppy image from the SD and then run the win7 files from a HDD partition because Vista and 7 will only run in a WinPE environment and that is much larger than 1.5mb so after you spend 3 hrs going to everystore you can think of and FINALLY find the one that still has 512mb SD cards (because it will only boot off 512 or smaller and no one carries cards that small anymore) you will be right back were you started.
If you are thinking of buying a M200, consider this. I bought my wife a HP TC4200 for $290 (Ebay Canada has them cheaper than US, even with shipping) and my M200 for $260. Both needed a new battery ($50), her’s needed a stylus ($40). RAM for the M200: $35 for 1gb. For the TC4200: $10 for 1gb. The TC4200 will boot off ANYTHING (usb hdd, usb dvd, usb flash drive, SD card (not the stupid M200 way) or network. The M200; well you read the post. Ours both run at 1.8ghz, but with the faster RAM, I actually notice a small difference, hers is faster. Hers lasts 40min longer on battery (about). Hers feels solid as a rock (with larger touchpad and touchstick), there is noticeable flex to the M200. Drivers for vista (which work in 7) have to be hunted down for the M200, they are readily available for hers. The HP does NOT run Aero.
Bottom line, Unless Thumbnail Previews of Open windows are THE main thing you want from a cheap tablet pc, (you won’t play your old games on your tablet as much as you hoped and the Acceleromter on the M200 is useless) I highly recommend the HP TC4200 over the M200. But once you have either you will absolutely love it and it will be an absolute steal, especially compared to what others are paying for their new laptops. And either will provide plenty of processing power for a mobile PC.
(And DON’T buy the IBM X41. They take a proprietary HDD that costs a couple hundred for a 60gb max drive).

Sorry for the length of the post.

By: Mack D. Male

Mack D. Male — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 05:57:26 +0000

Good to know Donald, thanks very much! I will definitely wait for RC1.

By: donaldc

donaldc — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 22:53:55 +0000

I have been running my M200 on Vista (Ultimate,for what it’s worth) for the past two years and agree that the tablet experience and performance are significantly improved over XP. I have had no problems with sleep / hibernation functionality, and have been able to run full Aero glass without problems.

I decided this week to try the Windows 7 Beta (the M200 is no longer my main work laptop) with mixed results. The upgrade from Vista was slow but otherwise smooth. Performance is good and stability is fine if you stick to the default graphics driver, which, unfortunately, is not Aero-capable. I have tried tweaking the Nvidia 7.15.10.9752 driver and this gives full Aero, but is a little unstable and causes the screen to blank temporarily during some transitions.

The tablet features of Win 7 seem to be another step up from Vista and XP, so it’s worth trying, although possibly with RC1 rather than the Beta.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 23:42:08 +0000

Thanks so much for posting this! I just grabbed a used M200 tablet off eBay and am planning an upgrade very similar to yours. Glad to know my plan will work. Is the 802.11g card worth the hassle? Did you put in a 5400 or 7200 rpm drive?