Individual Eleven – The World's Cyberbrain

Having been off work during a two-week illness does put a dampener on things, and puts you behind on blog posts. Alas, I shall endeavour to catch up. What do you do when you are a geek and house bound during that time? Why you grab a gadget, improve on it and have a play.

My victim gadget of choice is the HTC Shift. As many are aware, Vista runs below par on the Shift. If you have too many applications open, you feel that it is begging for more coal to be shovelled. I wanted to replace the operating system for a long time, I thought about Kubuntu and maybe installing Jaunty Jackalope. However, I think there’s more challenge in trying out Microsoft’s new operating system. Everyone knows how efficient a Linux distribution is; the HTC Shift has low specifications being a UMPC and I wondered if Windows 7 was resource hungry.

The Install

You will need the following items to follow my procedure:

• External USB DVD-ROM drive (I used my XBox HD DVD drive)
• External USB hard drive
• Hard drive partitioning software tool
• Bart PE CD with Norton Ghost software tool

1. Plug in your external USB DVD-ROM drive and reboot so that the BIOS sees it as a bootable device.
2. Backup your existing hard drive using a Bart PE bootable CD, make a Ghost image of the existing partition and saving it onto your external USB hard drive. You can plug in two USB devices using the provided USB hub that came with your Shift. You can skip this if you wish, but I tend to lean towards caution.
3. Partition the hard drive so that you can dual boot between Vista and Windows 7. If the Windows 7 install goes pear shaped, you have something to fall back on. I gave about 10gb to Windows 7, in hindsight 15gb would have been more comfortable to give room for app installs but I managed. I used a bootable CD that has Acronis Partition Expert to split the drive.
4. Reboot and install Windows 7 RC. It will take a while to extract all the files it needs and then it should reboot itself to finish the install.
5. Once Windows 7 is installed and you boot into it, there’s a handy guide that takes you through most of what you need to do next. However there are some things that aren’t documented, yes I ran into some teething problems…

The Problems

• Intel Graphics Drivers: Stick with the drivers that came with Windows 7 as they seem to work fine. When I tried the Intel drivers from the HTC website it caused a blue screen crash. The graphics card detected automatically and works out of the box.
• Shagctrl Control Center: This does work fine but there are some caveats. You need this installed to use the 3G connection from the WinMo side as you did with Vista. Make sure the modem is turned on when in Vista and BEFORE you install Windows 7. That includes the wireless and Bluetooth, this is to ensure it is detected and drivers are automatically installed. I found without the Shagctrl, the drivers required for the Generic RNDIS (the 3G internet pass-through functionality) refuses to install. Secondly, before installing Shagctrl, ensure Aero effects are disabled. I will talk about why next.
• Screen resolution: After you install Shagctrl and reboot, the resolution will be forced into 1024 x 600. This is all very well, except coupled with Aero effects in Windows 7 you will get a blue screen crash. It’s not the end of the world though, as you can turn off Aero via the registry, using something like a Bart PE CD to edit it outside of the OS (the Vista method works in Windows 7 as well). The easiest way of course is to turn off Aero before the Shagctrl install, as mentioned above. You can set the resolution back to whatever you wish afterwards. The resolution button works perfectly; you can flip between 800/1024 at will as before. I left it at 800 because I like Aero.

The Conclusion

After using it for a while, Windows 7 has given my Shift a new lease of life. It runs much more smoothly than Vista and the on-screen keyboard is a definite improvement. I hardly use the real keyboard anymore now, unless I am typing up a document. Overall, I am very pleased with the results and all functionality is intact. I was apprehensive about whether the 3G connectivity would still work or not, but I was pleasantly surprised. I would advise any HTC Shift owner to ditch Vista and use this, you won’t be disappointed.

Footnote: I forgot to mention, I didn’t have to use the USB Tool which is part of the HTC Shift Liberate pack for the 3G to work. As long as Shagctrl is installed, Windows 7 will see a new device and install as required

Gadgets, Tech HTC Shift, HTC Shift Windows 7, Windows 7