Dude, it worked! THANKS!!

Next time I will read the instructions thoroughly. I've gotten accostumed to ignoring long instructions because they usually lead to a registry hack or something just as tedious. (I need to reprogram myself to stop making assumptions.)

How did you figure it out? What made you open up the temporary folder and decide that running the setup.exe from that "source" folder would give us the correct installation?

I remembered the "black screen of death" when I first installed Win7. I fixed it by not installing Microsoft's version of the driver and instead I installed the latest driver directly from the manufacturer, nVidia. After it was fixed I learned that I could no longer activate the Away Mode, that special sleep mode that lets my HTPC record shows even when the DEC is "off". A pity since my remote control has two "power" buttons: HTPC and TV.

Well, that failure on install is basically instantaneous. To me that means HP is just looking at something and failing. You can also see that the setup kit calls another setup kit. So I figured I'd just watch the temp folder and see what happens. It took a while to figure out that I had to leave the first setup kit running in order to get access to the subfolders... This trick works for Windows Live Essentials to get those apps to install on Windows Home Server. Another thing you may want to do is create a "scheduled task" in Windows to stop and restart the TSERVICE.EXE every few hours. I see it still hangs up once in a while. The easy way to do it is: Open Notepad write in: net stop tservice ping localhost net start tservice Save it as "tservice_restart.bat" Go into Start/Accessories/System Tools/Task Scheduler Create a task that runs every few hours that runs "tservice_restart.bat" Create task... Name it Trigger is Once a day and then set it to Repeat every 3 hours (you can type in 3 hour in that box) Action: browse and find your "tservice_restart.bat", set "Start in" to c:\windows\system32 That's about it. You can run it manually and see what happens. You should see the front panel stop, wait 5 seconds or so, and then start again. I replaced my graphics card and the Black SOD sort of went away, but a new problem came up... the DEC doesn't make it all the way into a Suspend state. It hangs just prior to going to sleep. Sometimes it tries to hibernate in this state. I think that's a video driver thing, so I'm trying the most up to date one I could find. We'll see what happens! This is a Radeon X600 (yeah, not real new). TTFN Gregg

It's been running for 12 hours now with no hangs. I've been playing music for 2 hours now, which usually messes with the display but nothing yet. I'm saving your code just in case. But I want to see how long I can go without it.

Sleep mode definitely has something to do with the graphics card. My rackmount server would not go to sleep until I replaced the Vista generic graphics driver with the unit's original Windows 2000 driver. So not only does one have to test OEM drivers, instead of OS generic ones, but also test "older" drivers from previous OS versions.

UPDATE: It's been 34 hours since I wrote the above. No problems with the front panel display. Thanks for your help!

This worked like a champ on my z556 with Windows 7 loaded. The only thing that wasn't explained very well and took me several tries was when running the install wizard, don't close the warning box until you locate the new file in your temp folder. Thank you gregger for the workaround, I am very happy to be finally enjoying the system. The HP z556 seems like it was made for WIndows 7. Blue Skies!! mschark

My z560's front panel display app just crashed. It won't load up on start-up. Last Friday, Windows Update installed a cumulative update for Windows 7 Media Center and since then the display won't show anything but "HP DEC". I tried uninstalling the update. Then I ran System Restore to the day before the update but on boot-up it reported the same thing.

I would have reinstalled the driver but my DEC was not seeing the tuners. So I removed everything. I'm going to reinstall the display driver. However, I'll wait until the weekend. My guide is fully scheduled to record and I don't want to ruin it.

I am so hoping HP would bring back the DEC series. Something with Windows 7 Ultimate, dual core, 4Gb or more, four tuners, 1Tb hard drive, digital audio out, and HDMI. AND, and LCD colour front panel display instead of the old Reagan-era LED. I would be first in line to buy something like that!

After doing a System Recovery to undo the cumulative MC update last Friday, I tried to re-install the Front Panel Display driver "gregger-BLOCKED EXPRESSION". I got a message saying that the VFD does not exist and to reconnect the device. Device Manager doesn't show the VFD either.

 

I have been following this thread for a while now, and wanted to add a big thank you to all that figured this out.

I currently have Win7 retail x86 on my HP z545 with a working VFD front panel display. Yippy!   I too had to add the scheduled task to run every three hours, but because I don't use the Live TV option, my system is sleeping most of the day. Therefore I had to add a second trigger to run the task on startup as well.

Before the second trigger, the system would resume from sleep and seem to crash (or have difficulties starting). I would hear a lot of USB attached / detached sounds and then after a few minutes I could regain control, but was forced to reboot if I wanted the VFD to work again. (or go and get the mouse and then manualy run the task)

The “Run on startup” trigger corrected this issue.

Thanks again.

Back in January I reported that a cumulative update for MCE wiped out my front panel display's functionality. It failed to work even after I uninstalled the update and performed a System Restore. Today I ran Windows Update and, skipping over the cumulative update from January, I allowed it to perform the recommended and optional updates. When I came back the front panel display was displaying the time and show information (when I watched TV). I guess what Microsoft taketh away they can also give back? Anyways, I'm still running the Task Scheduler to cover all my bases. Thanks again, gregger. Shame on you, Microsoft.

I just did a fresh install of Win7 Home Premium 32-bit on my Z560. I could not get the Vista front panel display driver to install using the directions posted here. I monitored the temp folder during the process and never saw the files there. Through a Google search I found another method that worked for me.

Download the Vista front panel display driver from HP (sp35072.exe)

Download and install Universal Extractor from LegRoom.net  http://legroom.net/software/uniextract

Open sp35072.exe with Universal Extractor. It will put the contents of the kit in a new folder named sp35072. Inside that folder will be another folder named Source. Click on the Setup.exe file inside the Source folder and the driver will install without errors.

Save the SP35079 folder to your desktop, or either the Downloads or Documents folders. This way it will be easily accessible if you need to run the driver installation again.

NOTE: The driver can be corrupted or unloaded by a Windows Update restart or a bad PC reboot after a power outage. If you get this problem shut down the PC and wait a minute. When you turn it on it should load the driver with no problems! But if it doesn't you will have the installation folder readily available.