Windows 8 Developer Preview: Driver Installation for XE700T1A

Continuing Saga

In my last blog post, I detailed my initial setup of the Windows 8 Developer preview on my Samsung XE700T1A-A04.  As of the end of that post, I showed how to install the base OS, but several capabilities were not there.  The motion sensor did not appear to work as expected, and I had not yet been able to demonstrate pressure sensitivity with the pen.

In this post, I will dive deeper into those two issues.

Motion

This is a required feature in my mind on a tablet.  It is one of the little things that becomes huge about the 3rd time you do it.  It worked great on the device while it was running Windows 7, but it was not working after the Windows 8 install.  The slate always is in a landscape orientation.  When you turn the tablet to a portrait orientation, the user interface should detect that and rotate, but it did not. 

Looking in Device Manager, I saw two issues.  One is identified named "SM Bus", but the other was just an unrecognized device.  Samsung has provided a XE700T1A-A03 Driver Page.  I downloaded the driver for the motion sensor.  Upon trying to install it, I got an error that I was using an unsupported OS - it was written for Windows 7.  But, wait, didn't Microsoft tell us that anything for Windows 7 would work on Windows 8?  So, I got brave, selected the file in Windows Explorer, and clicked on Application -> Troubleshoot Compatibility in the ribbon bar.

I went through the menus to configure the "setup" application to run in Windows 7 compatibility mode.  This Got the driver installed, but the orientation still did not rotate with the tablet.  There was one setting left to set:

• Search Charm -> Settings -> "Orientation" -> Change screen orientation
• Check "Allow the screen to auto-rotate"
• Click OK

Eureka.  I had rebooted after the driver installation, but don't know if this is required.  The system did not tell me to, it was just a step I took to try to get the driver to work before I discovered the checkbox above.  Note that there is an approximate 1-2 second delay between rotating the screen and the orientation changing.

SMBus

Earlier I noted that there was a "SMBus" entry with an error in Device Manager.  This was easily resolved by downloading the chipset driver from the XE700T1A-A03 Driver Page and installing.  This went off without any issues, just note that after it decompresses there is a long pause, maybe as long as two minutes, but eventually the installer did start.  After installation of this package, the SMBus no longer had an issue.  A reboot was required.

Pen

There is a pen driver on that driver page, but the installer does not appear to do anything.  I have tried Windows 7 and Windows XP compatibility mode both with and without running as Administrator.  In all instances, I get a wait cursor for a very short time and then nothing.  No evidence at all that anything happened.  This one is still on the to-do list.