Today I installed the 64bit version of Windows 7 on a HP TouchSmart IQ500, I partitioned the drive and setup a dual boot with Windows 7 and Vista. Installing Windows 7 is very simple and took about 20 minutes but unlike some of the installs I had done there were some drivers missing. I downloaded the drivers and the first problem I had was HP’s drivers would not install via the download EXE files, I think the application was checking the Windows version and so it wouldn’t install in a Windows 7 environment so I opted to update the drivers manually and pointed Windows at the Vista \Windows directory which Windows 7 could then use, I go all the drivers working this way including the TV tuner. I did have to pick a Aero enabled theme after I had the graphics driver installed for it to enable Aero as it wasn’t selected automatically . Then I downloaded the beta multi-touch drivers from www.netwindow.com/windrver, because the drivers an un-signed and Windows 7 64bit will not installed un-signed drivers I had to disable the sign driver check using “BCDEDIT /set testsigning ON”. After a reboot I could install the drivers. I had full access to the multi-touch features of Windows 7, most of Windows has panning enabled with finger control also you can pinch Internet Explorer to zoom in and out and the same with pictures. As I have said before Windows Media Center works brilliantly with touch and my install worked just as I saw at CES. Also my NOVA-T USB TV tuner worked fine just as it did with Vista, it found all my channels but ITV1 had no guide data so I used another regions ITVs guide data and that fixed it, I had the exact same problem with TV Pack so it looks like that is an ongoing problem. I added the Recorded TV folder of my Vista install as a watched folder and could watch previously recorded TV shows.

I paired up my Xbox 360 and started watching TV on it and this is when main issue cropped up. When watching a TV show the video playback stopped, the audio continued and a Network Congestion error popped up. So I ran network tuner which found my network good enough for the maximum quality HD which is as expected as both my Xbox and the TouchSmart are wired via Ethernet, I have never seen a network error at any time with Vista so I know its not a network issue. I tested a couple of other TV shows and had the same problem, if I paused the playback and then resumed it it would play ok for a bit then the error would crop up again. I suspect this is some kind of bug with Windows 7 or a network driver issue, I ran out of time to troubleshoot any longer so that is something I going to have to investigate.

So apart from the network issues (which is a bit of a show stopper in the living room) it works great, hopefully I will get a bit more time during the week to work out the issues as I have had plenty of advice via twitter

UPDATE fixed the driver URL

11 thoughts on “Installing Windows 7 on a HP TouchSmart IQ500”
  1. Ian… thanks for the heads up.. I am a step behind ya in the test scenario but would like to do a forensics study of the network captures. can you please load net mon 3.2 and then do a p-mode capture on the net. You can inspect packets/frames by host process (aka eshell.exe or srvchost) on the VMC. There will be a mix of port chatting from VMC to xbox. Also, since you have contact on the inside, it would be great to know the “catch” scenarios for all errors that are bubbled up to the pop up on Xbox re congestions. I would hate to see this post devolve into total babble like some of the chatter and rants you get on tgb or avforum. So if you want to create a place to post captures AND detailed tech stuff (like it would be great to see the flows for what bubbles up error messages for the extender session). Lastly… my bit of speculation, that err message is generating at the VMC but rendered on the Xbox? Guess we will find out soon enough once we get the captures 😉 I also would like to know if you know of any process spy or API call monitoring tools.. I am SURE the UI “debug” stuff all the VMC hobbyist are talking about may not apply, I really want to be able to track net API (remoting) calls that go across the wire (as I think that may be the case now… ) for certain operations… Just learning all this so any suggestions you may have will really help. Thanks!

  2. Ian,

    Newbie here. I cannot see the vista partition (folder structure) when in Windows 7. What did you do to be able to access that folder while in Windows 7?

    I saw some HP drivers in the Program Files/HP folders in Vista but I am not sure which one is the TV tuner one.

    Thanks for the info. Ivan

  3. @ivan, go to Computer manager, select disk management and then you will see a disk that has no drive letter, so right click and select change drive letter and then give it a letter and then it will show up in Windows 7
    as for the tv card drivers i did add manually and browsed for the system32 directory and 7 installed it from there

  4. Ian, I tried your link above to get a TouchSmart !Q500 driver, but the domain seems to be unavailable. Is it a typo, or just temporarily down?

  5. Had the exact same problem with the media centre extender. Had some problems with Vista and gigabit NIC/Switch fixed with some flow control settings. So many things are better in Win 7 MC that it is a shame that unwatchable recorded TV marrs the experience. Live TV, Streaming AVI or MPEG is fine, even watching a DVD inserted in the PC DVD works. Have been following similar problems in several forums and sending off beta performance data and feedback to MS. Would go out and purchase Win 7 tomorrow if this was fixed.

    Windows 7 x64. Intel Core 2 Duo 6400 2.13Ghz, 4GB RAM, Intel 965 Mboard with gigabit onboard network, DLink DIR-655 Gigabit switch, Cat6 hardwired Xbox360, DVICO Dual Digital 4 Tuner.

  6. Followup – bought a new netcard this morning and fitted it – no change.

    live tv is perfect, divx movies no probs but playing recorded free to air content back results in perfect sound and having to rewind / fast foward all the time to keep the video moving. same content plays on pc but not on extender.

  7. @alfonso I used the option to let me locate the drivers and pointed it to the c:\windows\system32 dir

  8. Upgraded to lastest build of Windows 7 (x64 – 7048) – has sorted out all problems with streaming to the extender. Performance is excellent. Happy to shell out for this operating system when it drops later this year. 🙂

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