Hi there,
So, I asked a question today, and I feel like I should contribute something else that people have wanted to know about...

There is a newer set of Vista Front Panel Drivers released by HP.  They put them out for the z565 on Vista.  They changed the name, but they work on other z5xx boxes, but you have to do a couple things to make them install.

Go here and get the Media Info Display Update kit (they renamed it... sneaky eh?).
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareList?os=2093&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&product=3235292&lang=en

When you run the setup kit, it will fail if you don't have a z56x box.  So, instead:
1. Open a file explorer window
2. Locate your temp folder in vista (something like: c:\users\<username>\AppData\Local\Temp)
3. Sort that view by Date so that the newest stuff is either on top or bottom and find the most recent folder in there.
4. Run the HP setup kit and follow the first few steps of the Wizard, but stop before it tries to start the installation.  This will unpack the setup kit in the Temp folder.
5. Go back to your Temp folder and you should see a new temporary folder with the current time and date stamp on it
6. Copy that folder and place it on the desktop.
7. Cancel the HP installation.  The temp folder it created will now disappear (which is why we copied it elsewhere).

Now, go to your desktop, open that folder you copied there, and you should find a setup kit for the Front Panel Driver buried in that folder.  Install that, and you'll get a newer version of the Front Panel that works with Vista (be sure you uninstalled your previous Front Panel Display Driver if you had one).

Just to be safe, I still create a "Scheduled Task" that stops and starts the service (TSERVICE) every 3 hours, but I think the memory leaking problem has gone.  The Front Panel is still prone to some quirks.  But it's still a lot better than trying to live with the other driver.

Oh, and there's a new Vista keyboard driver from the z565 series that works on older z5xx's as well.  No monkeying with the setup kit required.  I did have to re-pair my keyboard to the z552 after installation, but that was no biggie.  On-screen display is easier to read now.

TTFN

Much thanks gregger.

Awesome, this is one of the major sticking points of me upgrading to Vista on my old z545. Still one of the BEST form factor boxes around minus the the heat issues.

So all the functions work? Including the TV, MUSIC, VIDEO etc. indicators?

Please let us know if you find any other problems.

Yeah, that all works.  I see the name of pictures, videos, TV show metadata, the time, wireless strength, and I forget what else.

I found that once in a while it gets frozen.  I think it pertains to the non-standard wireless driver I have to use (the SMC PCI XP driver) to get wireless working.  I have re-routed my cables and now have a direct connection via Ethernet, so I will see what happens.  My signal strength used to vary all over the place.

I kept doing the TSERVICE stop and start every 3 hours because of habit using the XP driver (which used to allocate lots of handles and never release them).  I spend a lot of time on the road and I didn't want to have it eat up lots of RAM and crash the box (and deny my remote access and not record stuff).  I just created a BAT file with:
net stop tservice
net start tservice

and then run that in the scheduled tasks app.  It's probably overkill.  I'll see if anything crops up now that I've changed things around.

TTFN

gregger,

I have a z560 with the latest drivers from hp's site. I just purchased the unit and I'm still in the process of setting everything up. I'm running XP on my machine. Do you recommend starting and stopping my TSERVICE every three hours? Or was this something that came about because people were using an XP driver with the Vista OS? I'd appreciate any recommendations.

Justin

I'm not sure... I didn't really run the box with XP ever, so I was having stability problems with the XP driver under Vista.  The reason for the restarting was that the XP driver (under Vista) seemed to hang up a frequently and allocate a lot of system resources after long periods of time (even when nothing is going on).

I don't think I'd apply the driver to XP... you may want to see if the revision is newer for XP on the z560 vs. the z552 (mine) download page.  Perhaps they updated both drivers at the same time?
TTFN

Thanks. I'll take a look. If my machine starts to hang, I'll check to see if the Tservice.exe is causing it.

Justin

gregger:

I'm not sure... I didn't really run the box with XP ever, so I was having stability problems with the XP driver under Vista.  The reason for the restarting was that the XP driver (under Vista) seemed to hang up a frequently and allocate a lot of system resources after long periods of time (even when nothing is going on).

I don't think I'd apply the driver to XP... you may want to see if the revision is newer for XP on the z560 vs. the z552 (mine) download page.  Perhaps they updated both drivers at the same time?
TTFN

Hmm, I thought this was not working at all and while trying to fix another issue yesterday, thought I'd give a try installing the HP Support Site driver under Vista. AFAIK, the driver is the original one which shipped, but I did not have any issue getting it to work. Sounds like I'll need to keep an eye out for resource usage though. Locking up problems will obviously be pretty obvious :), but how would I know if system resources are getting acquired an not released? Also, do you know how long it would take to get to a critical point? If it is days, I may be content with rebooting occasionally as it is nice to have the feature back instead of the unending "Welcome the the HP Digital Entertainment Center"

Thanks for the info. I loaded the software, and now it will display all the info, great! Just what I needed.

But the software will crash on resume from standby. Anyone else having this problem?

The system seems to work fine, after the software is done crashing, but will not work again without a reboot. no matter how many time the system is in and out of standby.

I'll try the "tservice" thing and post again.

--Deamion

@Deamion

Yes, I am experiencing the same issue under Vista, after resuming from sleep, the system does not respond for a very long time. When it finally does, the front display sometimes shows the scrolling Welcome... message. I cannot put the system in sleep again and have to do a hard reboot. I have even disabled the Hybrid Sleep option with no success. Eventually, I enabled "Away Mode" via the registry and have settled for the system to remain fully powered. In my experience it is more convenient to be in Away Mode vs. having to restart frequently.

Cheers

Thanks for the reply. I think I'll remove the software for the front display, and look for a solution before tring again.

I's good to here someone else is having the same problem. Now I know it's not caused by any of the new parts I installed. It sounds like it's a software problem.

Hi there,
I tried yesterday as well.  I suspended my z552 and had a similar occurrence.  When it resumed the Front Panel showed the Welcome message and I heard about 4 or 5 USB disconnect sounds.  The keyboard wasn't active for a little while and then it started working.

I manually stopped and started the TSERVICE service in the service panel and got it behaving again.

I don't remember this behavior from before, but I also don't suspend very often.  Usually only when the wireless connection drops or the TV won't come out of standby.

FWIW, a friend of mine who has a z5xx has changed the Suspend key on the keyboard to not do anything, so when his screen comes up black after being off for a while (whether the z5xx is suspended or not), he double-clicks the suspend key and the picture comes back.

My screen started behaving so I don't have to do that anymore, but I thought it was interesting (in case you have the Black Screen of Death after turning on the TV while the media center box is running).

TTFN

Just wanted to update this forum to let people know that this fix works for Windows 7 as well.

It did not work for my z560. I have Win7 Home Premium which won't even let me install it. It goes half way then reports that it's not compatible. My closest guess is that users of Win7 Professional or Ultimate will get it working just fine thanks to the XP Compatibility Mode in those editions. Getting the display to work may not be worth the price of upgrading.

Actually, read the first post in this thread and it tells you how to get around that. This is a top-level setup kit checking the version of your operating system and failing. It's not necessarily incompatible. Now, if you followed those steps and it failed, then that's new. The procedure is: Basically, to install it, run the setup kit like you did. Let it tell you it is incompatible. Do NOT click on anything. Open Windows Explorer Navigate to your temp folder: c:\users\\appdata\local\temp Sort by date Look for the most recent folder that was created Open it and look around for the installation files Copy them somewhere else Now click OK on the "This is incompatible" error in the setup program you left running. It will close and delete the folders out of the Temp folder. Find the files you copied. Open the setup.exe down in one of the subfolders and it will install the driver. Oh... and that black screen of death problem I had came back. I created a little BAT file that changes the screen resolution to something, and then back to the usual screen resolution and that wakes up my video card. I mapped that BAT file to be executed when I press the "Help" key on our keyboards (obviously you need the HP keyboard utility installed - but the XP version is the only one that works, not the Vista version). The program I used is: http://sourceforge.net/projects/qres/ The BAT file looks like: qres ping localhost (this is a 4 second delay between resolution switches) qres TTFN Gregg